2009: Wishing you and your family & friends many blessings for this winter holiday!

From Read Write Poem - Get Your Poem On #86:

Topic: Personal Universe in 23 Lines

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Ouroboros

I was Mozart at age 3,
yanking out the silky ribbons of cassette tapes
while waddling down the musical sidewalks
of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood and Sesame Street.
Ma was mad for a little bit, but then laughed
when she saw how her destroyed music was wrapped up
in a turban around my head. (I have the baby picture to prove it.)
Over the years, I wavered between
a cookie fortune teller and Medusa,
my identity hidden behind my curtain of Pantene Pro-V hair
and my turbulent emotions were bottled and corked up
well below my gut (though not like Frida Kahlo's gut).
Oftentimes I would spit out how I felt in only 17 syllables or less,
and like the snake-whips, each word would count
and carry stones that would hit the walls (and hopefully not loved ones!)
and echo, echo, echo their names toward their descent down the well.
(Sometimes I wondered if anyone heard them or even their tiniest splash of good-byes.)
I still believe in lucky number 9
and still have yet to figure out why I am attracted to it--
perhaps it spirals like the whorls on my salty fingers
and like the tides, pulls me to devour meditation like the starving wolf
and to write music across the watercress-lips of E.B. White's Trumpeter Swan,
my herbal voice, the final, loving touch to everything in time, distance, and existence.

Prompts from Read Write Poem:

*Note: This was a hard prompt at first, but I think I'm happy with how it turned out! It's been a while since I've written some rhyming poems...

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Runs in the Blood

I raised a village,
saved a village
through brews of herbal tea.
They gave me their palms
to read their lifelines,
but I feel their blood
rushing to the sea.
Yin and yang, hot and cold,
I tell them,
they must be balanced equally;
but if not, drink this potion
and your body will quickly restore the qi.
Alas, my son refused to carry on
the wonders of this Chinese magic
with ginseng to truly cure me.
He was too busy attending
to worldly matters
and wished to be carefree.
Of course, the loving father that I was
let him go about his ways,
and I too old to bend my knees,
instead sat and prayed for a future blessing.
One day,
I looked over at the edge of heaven
and exclaimed profusely.
If she could see me,
I would have given her my practice
as I am proud to see my great-granddaughter--
a compassionate nurse she will surely come to be.