The potter’s wheel has broken apart
and broken my heart. It was made of things that other people say
about me. How unfortunate. Because now my emotions play
havoc with your projections that you embedded inside me,
which you claimed would inoculate
me from the death-rays
of, uh, existence. I wish you could have explained
this part a little more, but I don’t really care either way;
you have made me into something that is far more than anything you could actually create
with your bare plans.
With the dodgy, very unsightly ways you cram
so many people onto this tiny, aching, heaving planet
that just wants to do what it can
for its people. For its heroes, who are returning at last. For the ordinary ones who stand
up and say no more. I am done. You and all your idiotic men
can go somewhere else and play pretend
with our lives. This is not wayang kulit, and no one intends
to follow you any longer. No one pretends
that this is anything but a White man’s
long-dead lover, still trying to stand
in its grave. Don’t give it back anything, as much as you can.
Don’t let them take your money, Grandpa used to say.
Don’t give more than you can afford to spend.
And I haven’t. I am a woman-man
born out of so many deaths it has become impossible to extend
the Osura Pesuasang beyond where I have left it. It is far beyond what one can
envision with this mind laden with projection. I would need to invent
a new way of being myself to see it all:
which I have.
Surprise, surprise.
I wonder if these tales have begun
to help you to, at long last, repent.
I wonder if this is, at an hour long past,
the place where all good gay Kristang boys get sent.
I wonder if you know just how much this brown, muddy clay reforms itself
Over and over and over and over again.
Even this life is not enough
for a wound so deep to fully amend
itself.
I hope you’re prepared
for what comes next:
only a Dreamtiger’s love,
and a Merlionsman’s fury
can ever ensure that the right things dry in the sun.
That the right things are allowed to finally, ultimately and completely
become rock-hard, untarnishable, divine instruments
of play.
I heard you calling softly, hopelessly in the night
for someone who knows how to fight back against
someone who will ignore you anyway.