royal: a collection

8/8/2019 Royal: A Collection

1/20

Connor Pierce


2/20

Contents

1 - Title Page2 - Table of Contents (Painted)3 - In the Quiet Light4 - A Wind Blew5 - Necrotic

Ell - 6I Remember - 7

Flame - 8On Crimson Tide - 9

Into Darkness - 10


3/20

More than human, less than God

Fired through the carotid gates

The burning house, your burning plain

The shining veil reveals such glories

In the dark and of the dark

That voluminous smoke, his turned-away face

What I heard when the blue went gray

Fibers and knives, plastic lines humming

Like the home from lives lived before

The stone the world forgotten blew

Wind like acid, wind like rain

Principalities and dominions, doors for strangers

Breathing meridians and red

Black as hell and made of grace

Rebecca of nothing, God, please, dont turn away

Transpositions of sunspots

What is done is undone

Ships did sail, irons did moor

While in the quiet light I see

United you, united me, can never have

All of this dreaded, gone

Foolproof, finished, erased

Watch the skies; sometimes we have our smoke signals

We; more than god; less than Human

IntheQuietLight


4/20

A Wind Blew


5/20

In half-lights, twilights

Sunstruck violets blew

Damask worlds within rose glasses

Revolts the skin from the flesh

Acid green of yesteryear

Sapped from muscles, half-asleep

Baptized cold waters rise

And from the Earth shake loose

Shadows of the Kingdom

Under

Wonders weekly worked begin begotten

Names and places imprinted

Rings of smoke and flame

Loosened nooses and blackened flesh

Necrotic, the hands resist you

Necrotic


6/20

Ell is for you, darling

And for all you are and ever were

Another piece of the machinery

Hidden in a basement, caught in dry rot.

l is for cold milkshakes

metime in the neverwhere before you were born

r Ireland, and the memories you have of it

r crisp tongues cool

r the firework evenings

d for verandas, white paint fading

ipping away into the wood underneath

d initials carved with keys and quarters

For the smell of a field after a rain

(If you werent allergic to that smell, of co

The sunburst hues lit islands of us

Trees shaking, blowing leaves about without

Rorschach blots of satin

Arranged pell-mell on the hardwood floor

Akimbo with ash

That nicotine taste pervading the bread


7/20

I see that youve constructed me

From the same wires and plastics

From which this form was originally raised

Who knew your eyes were so photographic?

Or your memory so svelte, with my eyes greened

And arms akimbo in fall lights

Headlights through the window shade

Drawn loose as a paper dolls hands

Bristled hairs asunder, entirely without

The television picking up forty-two stations of static

And trucks passing on the highway

Phantasmal, like the voices rising and falling

And who would have thought you such an artist

To draw yourself into the picture alongside

The way I would have constructed you myself

Your hand, pale and white with your wedding ring

Opening the door and looking in at the poor little boy

Upended and uprooted, starshot and homeless, under a table

Your whispering breathing of malcontent

Issuing envoys forth and listening to your pixies

Apes and fairies, winged devils on your arm

Wicked witches, painted white and rotting

You come into the hotel room looking at me, wireform

And your jaw, your maw, open to receive the host

Flesh stripped to the quick, and ring of jasper

Your gory mouth and hoary manner, suspended mid-air

A ghost half-living, a god half-pure

I remember


8/20

Burn the fire to the bone

Breathe the matches through my home

Light a window green and red

In winters night, the colors dead

And glorious in such painted hues

Dull and elusive, ephemeral bruise

Imagined deeply, sleep to ash

In the dead of life to pass

Unknown and unfelt, a dying train

Amid scarlet roses in the rain

Kept on windowsills, in hushed blue urns

Alone together and left to burn

And in the marrow yearn to tame

The blown-out smoke, that long-gone flame

Flame


9/20

In the early morning sunshine on crimson tide

Cobweb thrush lining doorsteps

In memory, in sight

I remember your neon glow

Some night wrapped in a blanket in a blue bedroom

Cerulean stained rose

Teeth yellowed now from the coffee

You drink and smoke too much, dear

Just some technicolor shadow of a woman I married

That cinnamon taste in the air

Familiar as hopscotch or sidewalk chalk

A path from the mountains, envoys come forth

A throne glows Autumnal

Washed up onto some lonely shore, a mile long

Lorraine, they once called her

One night under the vaudeville lights

Strung along in a row, saints before firmaments

The name on her cold lips

She used to chew on pencils in class

Until one day they splintered in her jaw

And she bled all over her Chemistry folder

We operate somewhere below words here

Cest la mort French, English, Dutch

German is in its grave

In my motor car dream she had no eyes

Waiting for love, waiting for words

I dont know ever happened

No questions, please, bitte, danke

Of course she was mine, under my arm, in my love

In the reflection, the flame, the paper, the water O

In resolution, in memory, in sight

This cobwebbing thrush across my body like wildfire

In the early morning sunshine on crimson tide

On Crimson Tide


10/20

Into Darkness


11/20

the cavalry rides at dusk

Whiskey short on breath in the bonfire of night

A curse, a daydream, visions of fire, a string cross wood

Plucked from shoulders unsteady and years too soon

Listen:

Air scorched with some Hell I havent known

(And babe: Ive seen a few in my time)

Here they keep the bones, withered and wilted, flower to dust

Bleached to oil stain under northern lightsThe Summer is the end of all things luminary

After decay comes the obscurity, my old friend

Fifteen years it has been since they came

The Bird-men, painted all the colors of death

Feathers slicked back, smiling toothless maw Hello

For my daughter, auburn and heart beats an hour

Head asunder, thighs pale in bare sunshine

Here stands the task, a man in practice, traveler in theory

At the foot of this pine tree your

Baptismal waters run red across your love

Meanwhile watches with pinhole eyes

Blind but to presence, creature of scent and touch

It waits.


12/20

Undiscovered are our means that our ends are a mystery

Slipping forth from darkness unexplored, cavernous

Echoes the blood from the font

Voice of a man forgotten, a blue room filled with smoke

A green world constructed quietly for tenants unfound

The flickering lights of a worlds stolen electricity

Batteries and acids corrosive in nostrils meant not

Even in the right direction we are lost to haze

Flows a river, wonders the flesh how we ever got by without it

The man docked in his cruel Owl mask, finger raised

Summoning from the rocks struck a wind

And words without voice, life without end

Come and see, traveler, come and see


13/20

At the foot of the mount the burning girl lays

Processional runs the blacklight vigil

Stirs the blood not to see, not to come forward

Youre rid of this world, I see

To the head of the line the faces are dust

And forward, a finger curled,you beckon me

Voice lilting, my soul and my heart are nothing

There is nothing thatyou cannot be to me, so singyour song

And I will come toyou


14/20

Waters forth, calling to sheets laid long ago

Damp to the touch and carved in rocks skipped cross stillness

Moving underneath the gauze veil, my touch at your lips

Into other kingdoms I cannot discern with these eyes

These black eyes, this mortal coil, this weight

A darkness, a gasp

Hold me close, my dear, my love, hold me

I will show you a world you never dreamed of in this life

Oh, sweet little girl, sweet little whore, your fingernails

Run across my shoulders like ice flakes


15/20

So close to sunshine, O GodCan you be my daughter?


16/20

Climb onto my shoulder and dont say a word

Were leaving and were leaving for good

Dont look back for a second, not a second, my young flesh

I unto you as you unto me, to the sunlight

To the warm tendrils of the stars beyond

The moon is only a reflection

Close your eyes shut tight, have no despair, and dont listen

Not a single word they say is true, not a one

They only speak bird, honey

You and me are one and the same

There is no shame, babe, no shame to be had at all

No, not Heaven,

but on the way


17/20

Through the darkness and into the caverns, that breath on your face

Dont listen to it, sweetheartWere on the cusp, the frontier, nearly there

There the surface is there feel with your toes, your fingers curled

And speak with your auburn hair to love

Answer the grayness with locust breath

Blackened, rotten, blood on your forehead

Dyes your hair red

Our love is water once more

O God, why did you do it, sweetheart?

I pulled you from the dark currentwith all my soul


18/20

Or is that why you did it

Why you looked when Itold you not to?

What has become of

your ashes now?


19/20

Where have you gone

and how could I follow


20/20

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