The Pure Lusitanian
Pedigree is everything, they used to tell me,
right before they sat on my face,
and forced me to eat, in nonconsensual misery.
I am only worth as much as a dog’s victuals, a ridiculousness that tells me
that I am nothing. That I was made to be
fundamentally disgusting, and thus a great target
for sexual abuse, and discrimination, and just complete and severe
agony
because I could not be anything more
than a polymathematical creole champion in perpetual slavery
to other ideals. To someone else’s Otherised standards and feels
based in the triumph of a culture that thought it was now fully capable of turning the Wheel
exclusively on its own,
and on the remnants of the rest of the planet
that they have decided they can actually call a throne.
Yo ngka jenti Lusitania limpu;
yo sa pai sa halkuniya china. Koitadu
Kevin Martens. Mutu tantu pertu
di fikah ngua jenti Kristang dretu.
Yo sa mulera ja tokah fikah inchidu
di mintira. Di trumenteza. Di otru mufinu sa sonu—
olotu ngka yo sa. Olotu ngka angkoza yo podih falah yo busidu,
mas pun ngka lembransa ki yo kereh lebah na yo sa korpu.
Dah spiru?
Antis yo teng ngua alma, yo sa naris impodih parah, kauzu
ar cheu di palabra-palabra mal. Di duensa sa chegadas. Di roza pesonya kung fraku.
And now?
Now I am free, and ready, and oh so calmly telling you:
I am not an original.
I am a copy, and a tincture,
and a hybrid.
I am normal, and transcendentally natural.