Well, sometimes they don’t really covet
so much as convert;
but you get the idea.
And sometimes it’s just covert,
the way you touch my calendar,
and seek to strike me, gently,
across the record—
which is absolutely stellar, by the way;
and in my Standard Singapore English idiolect, rhymes with unperturbed
the way Kristang music, and philosophy, and revitalisation
all also go together in the same fashion:
a whirlwind of everything you deserve
to take back, because you were racist, homophobic and absolutely unfair
in how you thought we were only good enough to sit by sea and land
and get naked and wasted.
Get frustrated, over how much sand
is being poured into our sea
by your lovingly autoplutocratic hands.
I like my sentences fine-grained, and textured,
and long, longer than
yours and my community’s remand
in the heart of the Straits of poor, disrespected Sundaland.
I wear very bright wristbands.
I must be that flower.
I write very mighty poems.
I am undoubtedly the exponentiated power
of man, woman, lion and sea;
alien, Other, tiger and reality.
I am the last play of the Portuguese Amateur Dramatic Company.
(Definitely, because it’s so hard to make money.)
And I am serenity, Kristang-style:
houses built on the water of the Priest’s Land,
and flowers blooming for miles.
Bye busca, bye busca,
Yo nunka Contra,
Amor ja da, Amor ja da,
Flores yo cubesa,
Se-seti dia,
Amor nunka contra,
Tudo banda, you ja busca,
Ke tera, ja by navaga.
Oh! Amor, Oh! Amor,
Yo fikar emfado,
Oh! Amor, Oh! Amor,
Yo Amor ku bos.
From My People, My Country, by Bernard Sta Maria (1982)
And yes,
I went to go search
and all I found was this:
a song, a surrounding,
a thieves’ den made of roses;
a tree growing up to highest heaven—
—the world’s mightiest Portuguese-Eurasian fist.
Flowers, also, can be his.