Fic: Al-Qurnah (1/1)
Title: Al-Qurnah
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sayid/Sawyer
Word Count: 377
Summary: This is where two forces of nature collide. For haldoor, who requested “Poetry and Sayid/Sawyer” at The lostsquee 2009 Lost Summer Luau, and for the 18coda Prompt #16 - Mosso. General Series Spoilers through Season Five.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For haldoor: It’s been way too long since I wrote poetry, so I have to both thank you for the prompt to do so again (I’ve missed it!), and apologize in advance that my skills are rusty - narrative poetry was never my forte, anyway, and this most certainly drifted in that direction. But yes - it’s pretty much a big long conglomeration of messy free verse with lots of geographical references and mythological metaphors that don’t logically mesh, as well as a probable overuse of references to the Arabic language and the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers (and their respective myths... the Sumerian ones really just fit this prompt too well :) )
Al-Qurnah
Beneath the moon, they are - they’ll be:
all bared teeth and hard lines and
aching, straining need
And where the river breaks, he follows
running water, fruitful
currents tracing paths no one’s
ever meant to know and
forging on; the heat of the desert
equatorial still
Sahara rising in the west
and then setting, settling in the caves
of their mouths, the palms of their hands
caught between friction and flame
and the press of legs, of thighs
of lips bruised and bleeding
cracked against the sun -
and the world is rewritten, here
never meant to be;
never meant to be undone.
And he feels against the tear of it
the holy arms of damning grace
and when he’s sucked clean as the
Fertile Crescent
stripped bare beneath those eyes, that tongue
it’s only then that he feels as if this life,
tainted, wasted,
is worth the trouble of a breath
the sacrifice of a single beating heart -
But breathe, he does, like the currents of the tides
the drift of humanity from coast to jagged coast
the rasp of rock and heat and teeth and rage like
fading amber glass
in extremis
washed up against the shore;
And his heart trembles, races, hums
even as the pieces scatter
as the world falls down -
and the vial of the angels
empties in the waters -
still
torpor calling, begging
but drying with the river
dying on the wings.
So reaching, now, grows weary
wicked-limbed against the chill
And release like the ancients
who came
and went like rivers
tracing serpents with their seed
sowing posterity in the lush give of land,
of skin,
bends and curves like vessels
like veins blue as blood and rushing
spilling, sinking, soaring -
passion turning poison
inside crevices of night.
And when the time comes to claim this
to own it as theirs
they’ll bite their tongues -
when the time comes to fight for it
they will lay down their arms
walk away amidst
white flags and white scars
against the foam of the surf and the draw of the sun
for this thing belongs to shadows,
stranger to the day;
but for now, this is their refuge, this fateful
aching want -
Because what they have is paradise, even when it hurts.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sayid/Sawyer
Word Count: 377
Summary: This is where two forces of nature collide. For haldoor, who requested “Poetry and Sayid/Sawyer” at The lostsquee 2009 Lost Summer Luau, and for the 18coda Prompt #16 - Mosso. General Series Spoilers through Season Five.
Prompt Table: Here
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
Author’s Notes: For haldoor: It’s been way too long since I wrote poetry, so I have to both thank you for the prompt to do so again (I’ve missed it!), and apologize in advance that my skills are rusty - narrative poetry was never my forte, anyway, and this most certainly drifted in that direction. But yes - it’s pretty much a big long conglomeration of messy free verse with lots of geographical references and mythological metaphors that don’t logically mesh, as well as a probable overuse of references to the Arabic language and the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers (and their respective myths... the Sumerian ones really just fit this prompt too well :) )
Al-Qurnah
Beneath the moon, they are - they’ll be:
all bared teeth and hard lines and
aching, straining need
And where the river breaks, he follows
running water, fruitful
currents tracing paths no one’s
ever meant to know and
forging on; the heat of the desert
equatorial still
Sahara rising in the west
and then setting, settling in the caves
of their mouths, the palms of their hands
caught between friction and flame
and the press of legs, of thighs
of lips bruised and bleeding
cracked against the sun -
and the world is rewritten, here
never meant to be;
never meant to be undone.
And he feels against the tear of it
the holy arms of damning grace
and when he’s sucked clean as the
Fertile Crescent
stripped bare beneath those eyes, that tongue
it’s only then that he feels as if this life,
tainted, wasted,
is worth the trouble of a breath
the sacrifice of a single beating heart -
But breathe, he does, like the currents of the tides
the drift of humanity from coast to jagged coast
the rasp of rock and heat and teeth and rage like
fading amber glass
in extremis
washed up against the shore;
And his heart trembles, races, hums
even as the pieces scatter
as the world falls down -
and the vial of the angels
empties in the waters -
still
torpor calling, begging
but drying with the river
dying on the wings.
So reaching, now, grows weary
wicked-limbed against the chill
And release like the ancients
who came
and went like rivers
tracing serpents with their seed
sowing posterity in the lush give of land,
of skin,
bends and curves like vessels
like veins blue as blood and rushing
spilling, sinking, soaring -
passion turning poison
inside crevices of night.
And when the time comes to claim this
to own it as theirs
they’ll bite their tongues -
when the time comes to fight for it
they will lay down their arms
walk away amidst
white flags and white scars
against the foam of the surf and the draw of the sun
for this thing belongs to shadows,
stranger to the day;
but for now, this is their refuge, this fateful
aching want -
Because what they have is paradise, even when it hurts.