Writing newsletters and opinions based on my day to day is one aspect to the blog, but thanks to a friend who has created a space for me to scribble as a release of words for pure creativity, I’ve realised I need a space to capture these, somewhere to store them, so that some day, one day, they are collectively found for publishing. They bare very little real reflection to my actual life, that form the basis of ‘if I were to ever write a book’, I could manifest something from these words. Take peace that they are simply just creative musings. Nothing more. Not much less. I hope you can enjoy them. Xxx
first published Scribbles
Drowning in the memories of a simpler life
Drowning in the dreams of candlelights long stem glasses and fabric tablecloths
Drowning in suspended moments of hugs and the touch of their hand
Drowning in the anxiety that plagues their soul, fighting for a way out of the mire fighting for a passage of ease
Drowning in their hormones and everything the Double X gives her
Drowning under the moon
Drowning under the blood
Drowning to stay afloat
She features often on my grid, the boats, the buildings, the evening sunlight. Not apologising for repetitive views. Not apologising for dark words. Simply using this space to create and express.
I miss you.
I miss you.
And I shouldn’t.
I have a home.
I have a home where my life is safe.
Where everyone is equal.
Where the weather is defined by seasons.
And the seasons are defined by weather.
Why then,
Why does my heart stop beating when I think about you?
Why then,
Why does my breath falter and catch a sob when I think of your upturned gaze,
Your songs,
Your language?
Why then,
Why do tears fill my green eyes when I imagine your gold savanna, your green forests? Your golden sun, your green blue grey storms?
Why then,
Why, when I place foot step in front of footstep,
Heart beat alongside heartbeat,
Breath after breath,
Do I have to stop?
Stop to breathe.
Stop to cry.
Stop crying.
Sobbing for you.
It’s predawn in Jozi Town and we’re on the road. Cars whizz past in the fast lane of the highway, their red lights lined up one behind the other in the City of Golds’ early morning rush hour. We pass lumbering trucks but the dangerous taxis weave in and out like the mafia lords, seemingly oblivious to the fear they invoke. Slowly, like an old man rising from his slumber, the sun begins to reach this far southern latitude and there’s nothing quite like the colour of the South African winter sunrise: the eastern skyline is as dusty gold as the precious metal that lies below her red soil, scrub and thorn trees. Here on the plateau of The Highveld, the dark shadows of construction line the skyline alongside mountains of mined gold dust, a veritable contrast to the grit and glory that is this old new city.
Away from the coal face lies the ramshackle confluence of ghetto-style homes, ensconced in a blanket of smog from the fires they burn for warmth and nourishment, absent from the power grid.
And the road twists backwards and forwards like the curling river down to the coastal towns, and as the valley falls away at the foothills of the mountain, the winter savanna lands rise up. Dotted with the umbrella thorn trees that remind me of history books and the Anglo Boer and Anglo Zulu war that was fought here, the bright orange flowers of the Aloes dot the brown savanna as if a child has dropped splotches of paint from up above. The umbrella thorns are scrawny and scarce of their summer bloom, but you can imagine the shade from their far reaching branches that spread like a blanket.
*****
The moon is full, bathing the dairy countryside in an eerie glow, the mountains and koppies lying regal, watching from the horizon. In the fields are younger cows lowing in the predawn cold, the queueing milk cows form a train of shadows down the road in the distance.
Inside, the acrid smell of a Lion match in its dying throes as the candle burns bright in the dark early morning sends a memory to that part of my mind that is forever seeking nostalgia. It takes me to my childhood in my mothers kitchen, where the help would light the coal stove early in the morning.
In the distance, the thrum of the diesel generator bounces from the dairy, regular electricity is off and as we raise children for school the smell of paraffin lanterns and candle flames fills the air with coffee cooking on gas.
I stand alone in the midst of the failing chaos
Breathing.
The others
They dance around me
Step aside each other
Muted, tired, focused.
Swipe
Wipe
Scrape
Clatter.
Scraps of greased nourishment
Limp leaves
Masticated bones
They tumble over the rest onto scrappy piles.
Plates climbing like medieval tower walls
Uneven
Loose
Jarring cutlery sticking out of turrets
A preamble of tumbling ceramic sitting on the breath of a passing bus boy.
The hum of electrics
Smoke suckers
Ice makers
Burners
A white din of debris filtering into my head.
Streaks of sauce stick to surfaces
Fallen fries and lost lettuce lie at my feet
And
Blackened trays smoulder from the oven.
A whirring printer
And spewing paper
Breaks my reverie.
Sweets.
It’s time for round three.
Frangipani
@Gaenor_duP_67
You say Frangipani. I say Beach.
You say Frangipani. I see creamy white and golden yellow tunnels floating on blue-white seashores.
You say Frangipani. I feel soft silk, tumbling shores of high tide on the soles of my feet.
You say Frangipani. I smell sweet scented luxury. I smell sea spray and soft summer and dusk.
You say Frangipani. I taste vanilla and sugar on my sun kissed lips.
You say Frangipani. I hear lazy bees at noon, pesky mosquitos at dusk, the ceaseless roar of the tides and currents.
You say Frangipani. I think Wild Coast. Me aged 12. Rural beach holidays. Summer. High legged one piece swimsuit. Sun burn and orange gold sunrises. Not a soul around to steal the crayfish as the tide drops. Candlelit board games. My siblings.
My Dad.
Mom.
Who said “that’s a frangipani flower” when I picked it from the tree and set it off on a journey across the Indian Ocean.
Stillness
pervades the midnight hour. The
Memory
of his bicycle rattling away from me through the darkness of the park is a
Gift
of nostalgia, a memory of a lingering kiss, tantalising on the clavicle of my neck. A moment of single isolation when he wasn’t scared to love a little.
The scent of the freshly cut, dew-laden wet grass causes my eyes to look
Search
for him. I know where I will find him. Either in my heart. Or there on the
Precipice
of his own torrid demons, his dark emotions hanging over his lips, sinking his eyes in sorrow.
An innate childhood need to repair damaged hearts rises within me. I long for those seldom observed moments of
Purest Joy,
moments where his smile reaches from his elegant ears, his beautiful mouth and to his cat-green eyes, moments that seem to flash only across empty beaches at sunrise; ocean winds whipping at the cresting waves and wings of the seagulls. Him, wearing cut-off demims, bare chested and arms outstretched as he flies across the sands.
It was his
Sustenance
in the days of our adolescence, his escape to the beach when the darkness of his home pervaded every cell of his body. We had moments of happiness when it was just the 2 of us.
When I found him, accidentally, in the summertime city some years later, we would picnic in the evenings before the sun sank, golden hours, heavy air or even on windy afternoons in the park, and when the storms arrived and broke to relieve the omnipresent heat, he would dance on the grassy banks, barefoot, his jeans rolled to his calves, as sheets of the
Gossamer
summer rain drops would spill into his hair, like the tears tumbling down his cheeks when he was lost in the memory of his own
Loss,
a loss so inextricably trapped in a dark windowless room that it fed off itself to survive. His story was not a journey. It had bumped about crashing into dark objects and yet, as with every single thing in this space, it had had its’ own
Beginning.
It had been a beginning that ended to even start with. As if he deserved no grand
Finale,
his arrival in this world merely a stutter on the morning rays of sunlight in the
Stillness
of a day.
Her voice moves between rooms like a scented whisper on the twilit horizon. Like the wineglass that was lost, displaced more and more as the evening wore on, she’s always searched for. And she wanders between rooms seeking out the grazed knee to clean up and bandage, to still the tempestuous arguments between the sports fans arguing over new rugby rules, topping up wine glasses and snorting a giggle into her own if she manages to be in its possession. She fluffs baby potatoes doused in buttery parsley sauce in the kitchen, she changes the playlist and turns down the volume as she glides on bare feet to the patio, touching the cheek of her smiling son, his eyes lit up with a sugary glaze of happiness. A lingering masculine scent wafts into her nose as a taut arm snakes around her waist; a seductive whisper of adoration in her ear, briefly before she extricates herself to light the candles and top of the punch-bowl. Childish shrieks of delight race across the lush garden as the young ones take turns streaking naked under the sprinkler, arcs of flying water catching the light, the earth becoming a little more muddy by the second, and dirty paws and feet begin to traipse sand onto the gleaming indoor tiles. Little clothes lie around scattered on couches and chairs, handbags lie open revealing cell-phones, dirty tissues, lipsticks, purses. The setting sun is gold, stretching her fingertips across herbaceous borders and florid pink flowers, a riot of colour clashing with the heady scent of the days end. Plates are distributed, piled high with all the food groups, neither inclined to be wasteful or delicate in flavour. The music is loud again, did the teenagers change the playlist? A table now, glasses, candles, plates, arms reaching across for the jugs of water, bottles of wine, a fresh serving of soul-filling food. A whisper in the ear of a neighbour, a shriek of laughter, an exhausted toddler straddling her mammas lap as mamma tries to fork food between her red lips. The night time garden sounds begin to bubble through the dinner cacophony: a frog below the pond reeds bellowing for his mate, an annoying mosquito buzzing in the ear of a sleeping dog. An owl hoots, despite the absence of garden quiet. Soggy ice cream cones lie discarded by the side tables, tiny demi -tasse cups empty but for the lingering scent of black coffee, little bodies curled into one another on the couches sleepily gazing at flickering images on the tv, teenagers stretched on the floor gazing into phones. Her wine glass now packed into the dishwasher, the arms whooshing gently, she quietly creates calm in her kingdom with soft piano tunes on a playlist and soft murmuring voices of her friends dispelling the luxurious chaos of the afternoon.
Red. The colour of my trajectory into this desperate world: through the pulsing bloody entrance of the uterus of my dying mother to this inevitable point of my demise: into the fiery infernos of blazing red hell, blood rushing from my hands like silken paint on a blank canvas.
I howl into the black of the night, my rage flying from me in an arc of hot fury.
Above me, it is only the white gold orb of the full moon who listens, and she is silent as she casts dark shadows in the alleyway, dimly lit except for blue-black spaces between the rubble and waste in which I have come to die.
Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals 