The Glosa

I have been on a bit of a poetry kick lately, so when I heard that our third assignment for Creative Writing was going to be to write poetry I was excited. When I read over the instructions for the assignment my excitement faded. When I write poetry I just write it. I don't follow and rules, I just write what comes to mind. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night with the starting of a poem in my head and I have to put it on paper. So I will stumble around my apartment, in the dark, looking for pen and paper. It seems silly but if I didn't write it down it would disappear just as fast as it appeared.

Some of these mid-night scrawlings have been pretty good. Well at least I think so. But my point is, when writing these gems down I didn't leave something out or put something in so that it fit the rules. I just let it flow. I just felt that that is what poetry was about, letting it flow, naturally. 

Well after I made my selection from the list of choices, I started my assignment.

I chose a 'glosa'

The glosa is an early Renaissance form of poetry that was developed by poets of the Spanish court in the 14th and 15th centuries. A glosa can be a tribute to another author. The opening quatrain, called a cabeza, is by another poet, typically one that is well known. You chose any four consecutive lines from one of their poems. 

The quatrain opens the poem, followed by four stanzas, each of which is generally ten lines long, that elaborate or "glosses" on the cabeza chosen. The tenth line of each stanza is a line from the cabeza. So the tenth line of the stanza is the first line of the cabeza, line twenty is the second line of the cabeza and so on.

The usual rhyme scheme of a glosa is, the last word in lines 6, 9, and 10 must rhyme. 

I have to admit, I enjoyed writing my gloss. It was challenging. Like trying to put together a complicated jigsaw puzzle. In the end I gained a new appreciation for traditional forms of poetry. I also ended up with a poem I am truly proud of. It may not be Shakespeare  It may not be your cup of tea. Heck, my teacher might even rip it apart, tell me it's crap. But I don't care. 

I tried something new, something I really did not even want to attempt... but I did, and I love it.  

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 Your gaze met mine and held
1,2...
I look away, I can't breath
So many tiny moments amounting to a feeling frozen in my soul
Your hand almost grazes mine, my stomach flutters
You are the king and I but merely a servant
Your Queen is a beauty unmatched
My envy twists me ,coils and pulls me deeper into madness
I am now the creature lurking in the shadows, watching and wanting what is
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Modern Kings

The King stood with his head held high
Dressed in his finest wears, very sure to cause stares
His gaze pierced my very soul
My heart fluttered, hoping he would never let it go
I kneel in his presence, forever surrendering my will
Hail to the chief, who's high head and nostalgic sense has made him a thief
Fluttering hearts are his bounty

The family that scares together, stays together.

The other night was Halloween and as usual, my family went all out. Every year we spend the day of the October 31, decorating the yard of my parents three-storey Fort Rouge home. The house lends itself well to Halloween as it looks like it's haunted. The yard is full of large trees and the stairs leading up to the front door are old stone.
My sisters and I dragged out the boxes of decorations from the basement and got to work. We raked piles of leaves into makeshift gavel at the foot of spooky headstones. Lined the trees with hanging bats, and switched the lightbulbs to eerie red and purple lights. Decorating is a great time to hang out with your family We laughed at each others lame grade school decorations and tried on the costumes our mother since we were kids.
AS the sun started to set, we put on the CD of scary sounds and took our places. I sat in a rocking chair at the top of the stairs while my younger sister, dressed in a mechanics jumpsuit and gravedigger mask, slumped over the bottom steps. As kids made there way through the yard, she would jump out and scare them.
We had 65 kids come to our door, a new record for our house. Many of the children's parents thanked us for being in the spirit of Halloween. This is a tradition I hope that we continue for years to come.

My search for pain relief brings me to, Cupping Therapy

Since conventional medicine has failed to provide me with substantial relief I have begun to explore alternatives. For the past six weeks I have been spending my Thursdays feeling like a human pin cushion at my Acupuncturists office. Along with inserting four-inch needles into my back he preforms a technique called, Fire Cupping. 
Fire cupping involves soaking a cotton ball in 95% alcohol. The cotton is then clamped by a pair of forceps and lit via a match or lighter. The flaming cotton ball is then, in one fluid motion, placed into the cup, quickly removed, and placed on the skin. By adding fire to the inside of the cup, oxygen is removed and a small amount of suction is created. Dark circles may appear where the cups were placed due to rupture of the capillaries just under the skin, but are not the same as a bruise caused by blunt-force trauma. According to my Acupuncturist, the darker the bruise, the worse that area is. It is fascinating how the same amount of pressure is used in all the cups but the ones that are placed over my herniated disc always leave a more prominent bruise, sometimes a small amount of blood is present, which he sweeps up with a Q-tip and then shows me the colour. 
I wish I could say that the results have been amazing but that would be a gross overstatement. I return every week because i do believe that it is doing some good and I have been told that over time it can help improve both my circulation and my pain, plus it is really cool!

The following is the definition of cupping therapy from Wikipedia:
Cupping therapy is an ancient Chinese form of alternative medicine in which a local suction is created on the skin; practitioners believe this mobilizes blood flow in order to promote healing.^[1] Suction is created using heat (fire) or mechanical devices (hand or electrical pumps).

Her Heart Was In Her Head

Her heart was in her head.She could feel just raw emotion "This is love, but more," she said... It would ache when he was with her. And break when he would go. But the ache was a good kind, more than he will know. Her heart becomes a garden, when the little pieces break. They die and they are fertile, so flowers fill their space. She never wants to be apart. He filled her head up with her heart. She is alright though, she has learned, the fresh heart flowers smell like him.

Pity Time

Last week I was over an hour late for school. It was not because I slept in, in fact I was up before my 6am alarm. I woke up to my sciatic nerve screaming at me and was unable to move my right leg without an immense amount of pain.
The pain started just over 3 years ago, minimal at first but it got progressively worse. After a few very uncomfortable months I went to see my doctor who sent me for my first of many MRIs. Turns out I have osteoarthritis in my spine, which basically means that the space between my discs is deteriorating. The cushioning between my L3 and L4 discs has completely deteriorated, causing them to constantly rub against each other. The constant bone on bone rubbing caused my disc to herniate, meaning it is bulging out to the right and interacting with the nerves in my back. One nerve in particular, my sciatic nerve, causes me the most grief. If I sit down for a period of time, sometimes an hour sometimes only 10 minutes: my leg will go numb, it feels like a million needles are being poked into my skin. To say that is hurts would be a gross understatement, the pain can be unbearable. The morning last week was one of those times and I will admit that my first thought was to cry and spend the day in bed. After a few minutes of self pity I slowly limped to the living room, grabbed my transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) machine and my pain killers and started to work on making the pain bearable enough to go to school.
I could have given up and stayed in bed all day cursing my feeble spine but I made the decision to get my ass out of bed and quit feeling sorry for myself. I know that my back will not get better, instead it will further degenerate and I may end up in a wheelchair. I could focus on that but instead I choose to believe that advances in medicine will one day be able to rebuild my spine. I believe the moral of this story is, life will always throw you curveballs, it is not "fair" and shit really does happen but it is how you deal with the shit that really matters. It is not easy and I do struggle, almost everyday, but I give myself a little time to throw a pity party then I brush it off, throw on my big girl pants and move forward. Your life will be much more rewarding if you except that it will be hard at times, but it does not last forever and better times will come.