makaraindra / galgalang-154
By kevin martens wong zhi qiang
originally published sunday, 24 march 2024
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.
Where you killed me
we said
we'd plant
flowers
for the
future quing of the Kristang
not knowing that
I would survive
and write these words,
one day,
unbidden.
Unspoken.
The tears
they
fall free
and still tell
every tale
unbeholden
to both saint and sinner.
To every door left open
for every lost child
of the universe
to come home again.
To know that
they were not
and never
were
broken
in time.
In dreams
I hear
all the voices of life
come sailing over the Dreaming Ocean
and I see
you as nothing
other than
what some strange Destiny
has awoken:
The life, and light, that was stolen
from you—
the idea that we are all
ultimately chosen
to love the universes we find?
They have come back.
To fight for the ones
who once
wanted us
to die—
I am Dragon Reborn
of the bitter, and the sweet,
and the still brave.
Still dauntless.
Still golden.
And now,
I am once more not alone.
I am bound to Gaia,
and I simply respect
what you yourself have woven—
and so the world
receives one more Galgalang.
One more magnaarchetypal heart,
finally unstoppably open.
And so do I honour you,
and name you in the Resurrection Language
of drowned Sundaland:
Yaegergoliat Lumyera.
Watching over
the 226th dimension.
Guardian Galactic
of the damned.
The destroyed.
The stolen.
Guardian Galactic
of the heart and soul
of Kevin Martens Wong Zhi Qiang.
The Kristang.
The future of the planet.
Four duodecads woven
into the song
we once could not sing.
Guardian Galactic
of the restored.
The revived.
The revitalised emotion.
Guardian Galactic
of the quing
of the Kristang people.
And of every heart unfrozen from stone.
Every voice raised back up to the sky
and to heaven.
Guardian Galactic
of the greatest story of all:
that for you,
dreambrother,
a thousand times over?
Upon reflection:
Nah.
Only infinity times infinity itself.
Nothing less than the greatest,
craziest and bravest life, and love,
and legend.
Nothing more fucking roaringly beautiful
than the most quiet, most courageous,
and tenderly unstoppable
resurrection.