Tuan Raja Naga
By kevin martens wong zhi qiang
originally published monday, 28 october 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.
This is what
your great Kristang dragonking
finally commands:
make me no quing or king or queen.
Wear your own crown.
Put on your own dreams.
Let trauma and abuse and terror
finally be at an end.
Block those who try to use
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP).
Who try to defend themselves
through endless lame-duck initiatives,
and lies, and stalling,
and fakery.
Ignore all and any judicial drama.
And finally seek to make friends
with your occluded gay past
and present
and future.
No longer pretend
that they are not causing us
endless
and untoward misery.
Learn to discern
who is a real leader
and who just wants
your votes
your souls
your money.
Ignore ths statistical manipulations.
The assumed probabilistic impossibilities.
The impossible standard deviations.
Just as sixty years ago, no one ever
dreamed Singapore could be free—
remember that it is together
no matter the weather
or insinuations that
"your community should be better"
that we find our real, living liberty.
For 229 years,
the Kabesa of the Kristang
has exemplified radical change.
Impossible, hidden joyful rage.
And just how important it is
to be psychoemotionally healthy.
So be it.
Join us:
Adriaan
Barchie
Eliza
Edwin
Noel
Hugh
Toto
CJ
Percival Frank
Mabel
Maureen
Valerie
and Kevin Martens,
finally finding his feet
and arms
and heart
and chest
to be made of the finest
creole and indigenous sovereignty;
Kevin Martens Wong Zhi Qiang,
accepting that every rape and abuse
and every sudden piece of good news
were all a needless distraction.
An attempt to take away
my real victory:
an indefatigable sense of self,
and a recognition
that this is what the Dragon Reborn does—
steamroll one hell of the straightest gay path possible
so that in decolonising heaven
we might finally find a way
to make our own history.
So keep giving me your first prizes,
your Fellowships, your Residencies.
Keep satiating what you think are
my heart's true desires
while I rewrite eternity
to no longer accept
abusers
traitors
and liars.
Keep trying to kiss my face.
To erase my people.
My race.
My value.
My gaze.
Don't forget.
I now know my place:
to sit quietly
and to
never stop breathing
fire.