She chose,
as Her greatest champion,
a boy who thought
he was Her greatest coward;
a boy who thought he was worth
nothing at all
because of what he had
not suffered:

a boy who thought
growing into a man,
he would never, ever be anywhere near covered

in wreaths, and reams,
of stickiest, sunniest
powers.
In dreams, and teeming means,
of the world's healthiest, holiest
plastic flowers.

In jets of radiant semen light.
In words that reveal, to him, at last,
that She waited so many hours

of suicide
of tears endlessly jammed between fear, and grief, and fright,
of lovers' arms, brawny
and ready to rape, and molest, and die

lying.
Die trying
to devour him
alive and kicking and screaming
and crying

his hearts pinned against the wall.
His bodies beaten and ragefucked so hard
for years he could not feel Her real essences at all.
His souls reminded, night after living, writhing night

that to ever name himself Her Dragon
is to be asking for the skies, once more, to fall

and burst upon what shaking, trembling little remained
of his mind.

Of the hours that came and went.
Of time
that just
could not be spent.

Of the years, and decades, and centuries, and millennia,
that somehow still fit into thirty-one years
of a very, very long and very Kristang Lent;

of dancing so joyously and fearlessly
with every last one of the trillions of forms
of Death.

Of asking himself
was he hell
or heaven sent?

Of knowing, in himself,
that in the end
it is not about what it meant:

it is knowing that
people do not understand
themselves.

People fear to
reply to themselves
instead;

men who really should know better
still aren't doing themselves the joy
of giving full, and luscious, and beautiful head.

People, still, cannot
get past the fundamental fact
that in the end
this is what She said:

not man.
Not woman.
Not dragon. Not titan.
Just one hell and heaven of a fucking battered human

still somehow being himself.
Still changing the world
just by being so ridiculously smol, and safe, and just.

One little Kristang girl-boy
blossomed up into the Greatest Gay Guardian Dragon of love?

One Kevin Martens
at his core knowing
at last
he was always
in himself
enough.