Gay Paris

these streets of sarah baartman

nina simone, dulcie september

boulevards of james baldwin

these hard roads swept by                                 

sekoto’s brush

citadel; your belltowers & domes 

a collective memorial to

human rights; on grey days

dreams and hopes

surge upwards

against a ribbed skyline

t/here where

scientists honed their gaze – sideways

all-round, but mostly down

along the spine of the nose

     the formulas

         trying to define, to measure, to calculate

                  who can enjoy egalite (as filling between hunks of

                       moon and sun or

                          plain bread)

                         

i came

to find other truths

amid branded words, finessed tastes & eye-wide shapes

i came seeking

ways of perceiving, the delving, the ways to know

the twisted journeys of art

i came to dig

their treasures

but …

your basic  scent pervades the metro

your shadows

lay their (finger)prints

over trimlines, neon adverts & bunting

and when the lights shrivel

in galleries; the cafes go silent

their chairs stacked

the last waterborne-carriage departed

to overnight moorings

from the footpaths

to and from RER and waterways

past endless glass windows & concrete paving

& miles of lines

in my eyes

gentle whispers

lilting sounds, arias & calls of longing from the animals

of mountains and open plains

a-sail on the evening air: your names

touch ears, nape of neck, the pulsing folds

of this

corrugated heart

when i leave

what parts

will be tatooed on my brain

tricolours bordered in shweshwe cloth

a story ringed

by silvia's dreams and o.r.'s marks

sewn by singer needles

that clash mid-note:

who am I, algeria, haiti or reunion?

Oct 2017

Che

a motorbike

soars through the sky

a beret turns green, red, black

reflections

that glance off

the rising moon

the waning sun

a guitar becomes a

kalashnikov; a kaloshnikov becomes
a guitar

a t-shirt, a flag fluttering its redness

above green fields

& corralled horses; against
coral-coloured sunsets

for a short while

(just for when

you pass by, overhead)

borders open up

mountain ranges flatten

the sea divides, revealing pathways

back in buenos aries

you commune

with eva’s ghost; the generals

have nightmares

as they watch …  

a tango of silhouettes

an accordion
speaks from a twisted mouth
words go
this way and that - amused, emphatic;
nimble fingers
blue green blue & dripping red
streak their paints
across the expanse
of wispy blue

now and again

pathways cross

yours and

victor jarra, thami nyele, youcef sebti, nadia vera, el sadaawi, brother hugh

now and then the patterns cross
you and i

you and ordinary folk, in their numbers

in free and battle nodes, in zones of light and dark

talking late into the night

we meet, along

pathways and veinlike-patterns of the heart    

Nov 2017

Water

the liquid

sometimes silver

at times brackish

sometimes seeding, straining

(silver – mercurial wetness 

of broken feelings

in the eye)

glass

on which our dreams sail

like little boats

we come, we bow, we wait

excited

as kids for sprinkles

we wade gingerly, we surrender

& sparkle
momentarily

we feel the lower and higher currents

twirling & writhing

like eels

around our legs & middle

patches & glints
dancing
the tune
of upper & lower lights

i feel the tow, the backpull

the wash and slurp

i swallow; am swallowed

while small birds cavort

high up

against the summer blue

the draw 
of plugholes

to new insights

phases that dribble in, stumble, then swell

the liquid of our dreams; then ... 
moments of

waking

into solidness, constituents, continents

we live, pulsing, flickering

beside the river

within us

F.M. Oct 2017

World of storms

(Krotoa’s soliloquy)

Afrikaner, the Khoi, people

lend me your ears

i didn't come to bury Van Riebeeck

nor praise him

I have come to recall

how those days, so cracked & chipped

were wrought

I have come to un-bury pieces of myself

And thus, one day, i came to work

in his house

the crockery washed, the beds made, the floors swept

by those tiny hands

While scouring the shore

for shells, barnacles, mussels

i had been taken; just 11 years old

removed

by men in breeches

Like a mussel, like a patterned shell, i had the honour of being 'found'

being found art

being picked off a rock

Yet Van Riebeeck was an honourable man

& – don't get me wrong –

my uncle, who did not ignite a war

to demand my return

was also an honourable man

Are we not all honourable?

And so, i worked with the tongues of angels

& so, i helped create afrikaans out of stray words, utterances, sighs

and so i wove, as with wool or cotton

portuguese, khoi, afrikaans

into garments of

stark coexistence

A harsh entangling

that drove the children of the sun goddess, the first people

further & further away

to distant edges

far from fort and company gardens

… To edges of

extinction

Visiting the clan

these small feet traveled, then sojourned

in splendid openness

of veld, tree & fynbos

ah, the gorgeous reflexology of belonging

of child-like laughter, playmates and a festival of clicks

Thus it came that

Van Riebeeck, on his recall, set sail like a boat

over oceans vast

& i, like driftwood, eddied ...

but, alas, he was

indeed an honourable man

And so Van Meerhof arrived

who i took to marry, & whose children that budded and grew in me

ranked out like ivy

across the land; did they

in the cradle that was my womb

taste the distrust and suspicion

i swallowed

as i broke bread at fort and village?

Crushed between, i die

s many times

a wheel spins & a rope of metallic links

uncoils. Who

will be the anchor in my

cape of storms?

A short story, Cosmo's Return

I've been engaging in short story writing. My short story, Cosmo's Return, was published in the magazine Itch. The magazine is linked to Wits University and "is an online periodical for experimental creative work by emerging and established writers and artists working in a wide variety of media".

Read the story at: www.itch.co.za/writing/cosmos-return.

Children's story: Outsiders

Thanks again to the Fundza initiative which features my children's story entitled Outsiders: https://tinyurl.com/kdd7keo. 

Each story is edited before being published on the mobi site. Fundza also adds questions after each chapter to enhance readers' engagement with the story. 

Frank Meintjies

Kids' story: 'The ... African Pot'

This story, which I submitted to Fundza in 2016, is featured on the Fundza mobi site:
http://live.fundza.mobi/home/fanz/essays/the-old-man-the-wise-woman-and-the-african-pot/ .

The site "delivers exciting reading content to young people via their mobile phones".

Pathways to love

finding the arteries to love

we search within 

we make bold or tentative steps

our hands are willows, are embracing limbs

our necks are vases, earthen & well baked

our words
small blossoms, bursting forth

finding the routes to love

we give fragments of our souls

we accept parts 

never revealed before

we sob, we laugh, we rage, we touch tranquility

labyrinth's of pain & truth
labours of pain & love
with all the platelets, coagulations, smears
coated in red

in moment's of gratitude

along slivers of time 

when we are fully present

we find the rivers
to love

(Dec 2015)