Son of Sundaland

By kevin martens wong zhi qiang

originally published Monday, 10 april 2023

on tigri sa chang

and presented at North London Collegiate School on Thursday, 7 March 2024

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.

This is no island.
This is a highland.
This is forbidden. Larangan.
This is nothing but, and everything that forms
the Sejarah Kristang.

Siariang-siariang hierosa of drowned Sundaland, hear my prayer:
I am reborn.
I am reforged.
I am the forbidden spring, and the Singapore sting.
The folly of sectorised planning, and the very last Halo Ring.
Jenti kadmang, kung jenti di fing;
prohibited and prolapsed so far above out to sea
that what I have found is beyond even our Kristang imagining.

For I cannot imagine you.
I cannot touch you.
I cannot see you.
I cannot heal you.

But I can feel you.

I can feel
for a land that did not sink,
for a time that never passed us by,
for a space that we have never liked to call home.

I can steal
the glances of those who run the world, in hiding;
the trances of those who run from the world, dividing;
the enhancements of those who could be the world, desiring

a truth, inspiring
everything.

A better way to sink or swim.
A better approach to the Seraphim.
A better idea of who we have been.

Jenti Kristang drumih tantu.
Isti jenti Kristang fikah sundalaneru.
Merlionsman, Dreamtiger, even a Pasturinyu Bedri;

there’s Magnamakara enough now for the world at last to be ready.

Are you sitting comfortably?
Ja santah bong-bong
pra ingkontrah churah, kung lagri?

Because you shouldn’t be.
Up on your feet,
rise up, and stand for immensity.
Stand for tomorrow, and stand for the Last People and their dreams:
stand for the departing of every insanity.

Stand, and tiptoe just a little
to catch what came after
that first glimpse of the sea:

Our story.
Our history, purged and redacted and mutilated beyond belief.
Our cities and our tapestry,
ripped asunder, torn from the tree

of Life.
It does not matter where Atlantis once lived.
It does not matter what they still insist.
It does not matter whether we can forgive.

What matters is you.
You, and how you resist

bai truseh di layering, the lying;
the colonist.

Sertu bos kuniseh kung Miles Morales.
Of Spartans and Witchers and Black Panthers and all the rest.
You have read so much from this Merlionsman at his own behest.

Now, Makaravedra keninu,
now comes your own test.

Now comes your chance to dream of success.
Now comes your chance to invite only the best
to dive deep into the muck, the mire, the quavering distress

and feel, and live, what comes next:

a divine democracy, iridescent like Mars.
A peace of the prize for everyone, a glittering self-regard.
Ireidi is progress, an unending desire to start
again, and again, until justice lives in every heart

and you and I are equal,
standing tall where Sundaland’s shores once were, and still are.