scrawny
By kevin martens wong zhi qiang
originally published wednesday, 21 february 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.
I remember what you
told me
before you
bid me
slam my own head
into eternity
over and over
and over again.
You'll die
alone
Kevin Martens
separated from family
and community
and friends
because of your ugly little
body.
Your pathetic little attempts
to make me say
sorry.
To make me come
lie down in the dirt
with you.
The mud and shit
of this
ex-colony
and expect me to cuddle with you.
Kev, do you really fucking expect me to say
"I'm sorry
what I said
wasn't true"?
"I'm sorry
I projected.
Took it all out
on you"?
"I'm sorry
I didn't listen
when you said
I know you
were also
abused"?
I'm sorry, Kev.
But I don't know anything else.
Don't know anything else but
to fuck you up like a tool.
Don't know that you love me
still, and now,
and always.
Don't know that your love
still runs so painfully
and longingly
true.
Don't know anything.
Except that everyone on this island is all that I am:
used.
Useless.
Fools
to believe that there is anything more to life.
Anything more to this lifeless husk of flesh, Kev,
than to wake up eat breathe shit and just fucking
die.
To lie to myself, Kev.
To never ask myself
why
I don't try to live
at least a little
better.
To look up into the great Singaporean sky
and dream of,
just for once,
my own kind of beautiful, luminous weather.
Just to let it all go for once.
Say goodbye.
To really mean it when I said, all those times
you really are my brother.
But I
have no
skin in the
gay.
And it is getting
lonelier, and heavier,
and hotter.
Maybe not today.
Or maybe
just never.
Even if you are the sexiest man alive,
Kevin Martens Wong Zhi Qiang—
in the end, that's all it ever was.
And I'll say it too.
An adventure.