Pra Sunyeskah Vedra / Dragonfishing

Poem in English, written at Poesiaeuropa 2023

Malefor-Ozymandias

Kevin Martens Wong:
yet another false, twisted dawn?

I was you, it is true, once.
I had everything.
The lights, the powers, the stars.
I thought, unlike you,
that I alone was enough.
That I did not need to go to more fleeting fisheries.
My world was already broken. And yet I engaged.
Kevin,
my archetype-friend, I —

I committed so many atrocities.

Leave my voice be.
This is not yet truth.
Nor is it a mockery;
my story is still yet to unfold in full.

Rand al’Thor-Puck-Xenk Yendar

You bow to no one, little lion—
except to yourself, and those you love, and your husband.
And that is how it is done.
That was my mistake, flying far too close to the sun
within. Believing that we alone
could cleanse
a haunted world.
That some were too far gone
to ever be human again.
That was our mistake,
and left you with even greater problems.

But you are gay.
You are non-binary.
You are out in public, to the world—
you are not afraid.
That is enough, in the end,
for a dragon’s heart,
and courage enough
to at last,
unite with Death
as a team.

Take back the light.
Bring forth the fight.
Once more transfigure bleakest, emptiest night
into rainbow, iridescent dream.

Fjall-Lews Therin Telamon

I could not ever awake, again.
You have no idea of the horrors that awaited me,
little Kevin Martens.

You have no idea what I saw
myself, and others become. A Dragon?

Yes.

A monster, that almost cost us all
any kind of chance at new life, much less revenge.

You sleep with so many fears
that in my time, where more than real —
they were tears in the very fabric of the collective soul,
unescapable torture chambers baited with psychoemotional silver and gold.

You will never know what it is like to kill
and drink lustily from
the psyches of those you justifiably opposed,
until

there is nothing left.
Nothing on Earth, Venus, or anywhere else
that could possibly fill
your own heart, now tainted rock-solid
with all the non-colours of Death.

You may yet reframe the world.
But I will never again
be able to look myself in the mirror and say
we were all some form of human.

Daenerys-Dolores

I was first among them,
and never again.
I will never live it down, Kevin.
What I did, I did by my own hand, and mine alone:

I drank in it all.
I swam in revenge.
The lives of those that came before —
I crushed them, in justice, and strength

and no idea of what would come next.

You are likely a blessing, and a respite,
and hopefully what this world needs:
a rest.

But will you be triumphant?
Nonetheless, for your sake, I hope you never have to understand
the feeling that overtakes you
when grief, and sorrow, and despair

are all that your people know that they can depend
on. For your sake, Merlionsman—
may you always have choices.
May you never learn how to descend
to the same inequities as I.

May you never offend
the world, and the universe:

may you instead amend
what has been our deep, unbreakable curse.

Together:
together, always, now and forever,
we still have to learn

that we are all but human,
each and every time the Wheel turns.