civilisation beyond hurt
By kevin martens wong zhi qiang
originally published tuesday, 15 april 2025
on tigri sa chang
Koitadu | Content warning
Please first read about my writing in the Skribadorang or Writing section on the Igleza page here before reading the piece below so you have advance warning about the rather spicy things that I often like to write about, and why I choose to write about them, especially in terms of subverting unhealthy stereotypes about gay people, Kristang people, Creole people, Indigenous people, masculinity, neurodivergence, the body, healthy forms of attraction and sexuality, and using my writing to process the severe individual, collective and inter-generational trauma and abuse I have faced across my life.
Begin the rising out
from the sea
and holding yourself fine and wet,
with the barest ache
of salt and loss
that used to set
trauma in its ways
far too deep.
That used to fossilise
your heart
and broke
everything
and everyone
that you ever tried to keep.
Come home
at last
to yourself,
great dreaming wanderer.
Find your hope.
Your first and most beautiful
cognitive blossom.
Your endlessly reincarnating
mind flower
together
in harmony,
and imperfect creole-crystallising purity,
and sovereign, super-egalitarianising
Indigeneity
that claims no
world as its throne —
no world, that is,
except at last
what is finally revealed
to be Eden,
and home,
and a garden of reindividuation
that always began
as your very own.