Rare Sunrise

Ron Koppelberger

Rare Sunrise

The rhythm of enchanted illusions and blooms of wheat in cadence with the early dawn, the yielded flow of indigo cloaks that ethereal rays of sunshine assure in spirit of distant hopes and blessed depths of possession, he wondered and mused about those things as he shadowed the wisdom of haunting haze with the heart of a heaven in transit. Just a whisper as he awoke to the day and the future of golden sprigs and sprays, clever bond with the dream that was an eternal sea of amber grain and unimpeded worshiping saffron halos, in preparation for the talent of legend and angels in watch.
It was a managed eloquence in the holy yield of adventure surmised by the passage of tide and the transport of soul for sure savannahs of grain. They found the lineage of custody as they found the rare sunrise. He was bound by waves of fresh sunglow as the breath of calm seas filled the edge of the treasure, the accessory that bidden souls were drawn to in tempers of harvest paradise, berths of Eden and the lay of god

A Breed of Rain

Ron Koppelberger

A Breed of Rain

The eclipse of mystery in omens was a deluge in the life of Prey Claw. He found the crème in his coffee was curdled yet sweet and allayed to the harmony of sunshine dawns and wont. A wonder of ascending taste and a mildly amused rhythm of tender embrace. Prey sanctified the contents of his cup and swallowed the bidden blood, “Ahhhhhhhhaaaaaahhhhhh.” he whispered in satisfaction and passage.
The springtide fray he thought in simmering reserve, the course of maelstroms and the way of weeping rain, he considered the beholden day and birth in trade with the gentle assay of what is and what has been a tear in the depth of miracles and myths of coffee care, a sweet and a bitter barter. He sipped and found respite, reprieve in rages of fortune.
Pray strapped the leather harness across his waist and shoulders in easy movements of bond. Bond between the gods of chance and the fates that tell muzzy dreams where to sleep, where to amend the night and the calm in secret repast. Prey secured his harness to the edge of the cliff and around the trunk of an enormous weeping willow. The sun whirled immigrant beams of warmth and stray moted substance of soul. Prey took a final sip of coffee and in betrothal to the arrangement of wind and sun, teasing mountain balance and rapt crowns of revelation, secured the poise of his task and he sang as he absorbed the present.

“Foretell the blessings

Of daisies and dandelions

In tempers of rare wine

And wild adventure, A

Consonance with salvation.”

The will of god saved Prey that morning and he endured in courage and sighs, wonder and sensation.

　
* The rope snapped and a child would amend the faith in Prey, she would make him whole and in sunshine and rain, she would show him the paths of harvest saffron.

Anthologies Featuring Stories By Ron Koppelberger (Available at Amazon.com)

Amazon.com

Dreams in Frayed Cotton and straw

Dreams in Frayed Cotton and Straw

Ron Koppelberger

The harmony of gossip in black, in blood and bidden assassins breath bore his title and even so dreams and nightmares haunted him in slow easy demonstrations of fear. He was Sable Warden keeper of the sentence, the purveyor of the gallows, the hangman’s knot and the edge of a triple bladed sword. He was the mask, the crimson spray and the dull thud of heedless punishment, he was the magistrates executioner and the lever was truly heavy.
Sable sighed and rolled amongst the cotton sheets and straw padding. He was caught by the half-light of a terrific phantasm, a sleep chartered by the wont of a decision, a choice given him in the moment of death.
He dreamed of starlight and dark suns at night, he dreamed of red smoke and flame, the better part of a battle wrought for the sake of the kill. With quiet stealth he saw the figure of a man in dark havens of silk, he was levitating and laughing. Sable knew and his knowledge bought the drama. The figure floated closer and he raised his triple edge. The hilt of the sword was solid silver with triple wolfs heads at the base. In the smokey light the wolfs eyes glittered, the eyes were blood red rubies, the blade the sharpest in the township.
Sable swung at the floating specter and screamed with a furious anger. The man laughed as the blade ripped through his mid-section tearing him in half and dropping him to the ground in a spray of blood and viscera.
Sable grunted in his sleep and shivered; in the dream he wore his executioners hood and silver tinged vestments of leather. He saw the sky as the twilight shone its light on the figure of the man. There was a twinkle of metal around the dead mans neck. Sable wiped tears of blood from the corners of his eyes and uncovered the flash of metal. It was a necklace hewn in gold and slick with the mans blood. The design was unfamiliar to him, stars, half moons and emerald slivers of stone. Sable grabbed the chain yanking it free, the spoils of battle he thought.
The sky bled bright orange and red and in the distance wolfs howled at the approaching blood moon. As the shadows closed in around him he moaned and rolled in the cotton sheets, sleep laden and borne by what was due he dreamed of crimson seas and the wont of an untrod path, the path of an unconscious passage, in dreams of love, loves lost and the end of his humanity. The blade lay next to him in darkness and he continued on dreaming of yet another battle. Sable swung his sword and the flesh was always pliant, the blade unforgiving as he sliced the head from a slender figure in union with the fight. Wooooosh, a moment, a breath of mere seconds as the head toppled revealing a woman’s face, it lay, face upturned, bleeding on his leather boots.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he screamed recognizing his wife’s face. The sheets tangled about his feet and he dreamed of a scarlet sash binding his ankles and a small child, a boy towing him through mud and ash and the embers of countless fires. Sable kicked and screamed as he was pulled along, he was helpless in the child’s undoubting sway. The bed creaked and shook as he screamed in fear and convulsive thrall.
In the dream, the source of his unconscious hell he kicked screamed and fought the child pulling him, dragging him toward unbidden ends, toward an executioners fear.
Haze filled the air for a moment then thousands of leaves, dry, crumbling, flittering and fluttering like a million moths, they fell down around them and buried them absolutely. The tugging ceased and suddenly the child was gone.
He stood amongst the pile of decaying leaves brushing the heap away from his face. He moved forward. Ripples moved beneath the thick blanket, fast scurrying toward him in circles, and the sound of children at play, singing. The sky flashed a brilliant fire red and the leaves disappeared only to be replaced by mist and a sparkling dew that covered a long sloping hill of grass.
The castle stood in the distance and in the front a large pole with long tethers attached at the top. A group of children circled the pole each holding a tether. “We all fall down…….” they sang. They were expressionless as they fell to the ground in silent play. Sable moved to the edge of the circle, the children had dark half moons beneath their eyes and were covered in leaking bloody sores. He thought, the harrow has passed.
He groaned and tried to awaken without success. Daring fate he moved closer to the castle and the arched entrance. Bitter acorns lay in wooden bowls on either side of the gate, pausing he removed a handful and placed them into his pants pocket.
A shadow appeared near the stone entrance. Tall in black shawls and silver blades covered in scarlet. The figure yelled like a wild banshee, “YIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!” the figure grimaced and swung his knife blade at Sables neck. Sable stepped back and swung the triple edge of his sword. The air parted as did the flesh of the banshee. Blood and a thick viscous spray of ash filled the air and stained his sword. The figure fell to the grassy ground and an awareness stole over Sable.
In his dream he remembered, he remembered the gallows, the knots, the fare of a blood thirsty throng. He remembered the face of the aggressor, hung months earlier. He touched his cheek, hesitant, cold covered by the executioners hood. Sable groaned again remembering his wife and son, the reason he had become what he desired in hate.
Near the end of his dream he cried and a single tear tempered his blade, then he awoke.
The sky was dark outside and the sound of cicadas’ filled the space between his ears. He looked at the blade next to his bed and the black hood he had worn since their deaths, his wife and son.
Reaching into his pocket Sable pulled out a handful of pealed acorns. He whispered, “let it be at an end.” as he chewed the bitter acorns. Leaving the castle keep he moved on toward what he wonted, life, rebirth and new days bought by the hope that he could regain what had been lost.

The Beast Well Worn

Ron Koppelberger

The Beast Well Worn

The shelves were full of amber colored syrup, most contained the waxy honeycomb of diligent bees. He took comfort in his necessity, the rare flavor of savory fare. Toast and honey, coffee tinctured in the nectar of confederate reason, the reason of nature and its distinctions of glory. The effect was subtle and manifest in his ailment. He had gone to the doctor complaining of a strange skin disorder. Patches of thick bristling fur had appeared on his back and shoulders.
He thumbed through the encyclopedia as he chewed at the fresh bowl of venison and kidney gravy. His pantry was a motley array of dishes and delicacies, for the discerning palette.
Venison was one of his passions. The cup of honey laced coffee went down in a silky sweet symphony of bliss. The encyclopedia listed lycanthropy as a mental condition, …..the belief that one is a wolf… The business of trimming his fingernails was a secret one. The Tiger shank lay uneaten in his stainless steal freezer. Perhaps tonight he thought.
The patches of fur covered most of his back and arms now and his teeth had taken on a bulging pointed insistence. The can of chocolate covered ants, barely unsealed, were a compliment to the venison and kidney stew. He belched and knock over a thick viscous glass of cows blood. The scarlet fluid seeped between the floor boards and into the nap of his HOME SWEET HOME rug. Growling he thought about the conveyance of footpads and primal urges. He had a taste for the exotic and found himself salivating in wild throes of compulsion, an innate desire to devour. The elephant steaks and the jackal liver wouldn’t do, the zebra flanks and the goat eyeballs were none to him.
He padded through the pair of oaken doors in the front room and went outside. He forgot about the tiger shank in that moment as he headed toward his neighbors house and the most exotic fare of all, human stew.

The Licorice Witch

Ron Koppelberger

The Licorice Witch

He had an aversion to the Licorice witch, in his intimate confession he had expressed his deeply furious concern with the green eyed monster. The Licorice witch, a compliment to the sorcery of willing darkness and the blackest of magic’s. An abhorrent proof in the existence of evil, she was a restless exception to life.
The cottage was askew at oblique angles to the sun and the windows were painted black. The view from his secret vantage was limited. He contemplated by design of devoted vermillion fury, a fury that shook him to the core. He watched her thrash a large ornate rug on the clothesline strung between the cottage and the small copse of oaks next to her house. “ As if she were a hitten me……..” he thought without reason. Obsessed, he found himself watching her as she emptied her wash water to the ground near the cottage. “As if she were a drownin me……” he thought in the gloom of twilight.
He sat in his small asylum staring out the window toward the licorice witches house when a knock came at the door. It was her. “ Strange crony, I perceive yer joy in billowy ash and ills, ye would have my soul witch!” he screamed in fear. Stumbling backward he fumbled for his musket. In passions of delirious fright he tripped and hit his head on the floor, killing him in unfettered delivery.
The woman made merry in her cottage. The cascade of rain defended the sound of her laughter; she rejoiced. The faithless clever witch consumed the nocturnal potion, “Mystic darkness, backward and forward nearness, gainful, baneful pots of gold the revolutions of bedlams old.” She sang as she danced in glee.

Ghosts and Eyes of Fire

Ron Koppelberger

Ghosts and Eyes of Fire

She dances on the edge of a frayed twilight horizon, by the gentle sway of a milkweed drama and a dandelion in saffron bloom. The intoxicating wine of an innate possession by her side, in her eyes and flowing around her in waves of silhouetted shadow. She pauses in her dance and breaths through the mists of a myriad dream, what of the spirits in sashay, by evanescent coquette and divine rapture, what of the ghosts in tender embrace with the innocence of a ravens wing and eyes aflame by the passion of a distant satisfaction. She dances in amber spears of night tide advance, with the souls of a lonesome bond and a silent fate. In arrays of scarlet and cotton weave, by the whisper of a warm wind and the turn of a rhapsody in velvet cocoons, embraced by the dream, touched by the phantasms of a nightingale in ebony shades of moon song. She wills the wont of a myriad waiting flirt, for a kiss and the breath of life, love and sustenance, for starving darkness and candent fields aflame. She spins by the wont of magic assurance and the need for loves in clouds of ethereal smoke. Ghosts by the wayward glance of a tattered dancer, ghosts in flittering half-light rapture and in pirouette, by ballerinas and sleepy fools in desire, by the ghosts of err and the lore of a vagabond dreamer.

Irons

Ron Koppelberger

Irons

Coral Fundy wore leg irons and a faded orange jumpsuit lettered bold in black, FUNDY 320983. Following the mornings sin against his grumbling stomach, a breakfast of runny eggs and charred bacon, came day number 2,457. Coral laced up his work boots, heavy tanned leather hide and stained earthen hues of dirt and brown dust, tinctured by green grass stains. In a prelude to the grass trimming and weed removal, the guard banged on the row of cells one by one, “Work detail!” he yelled.
Corals cell door slid open with an aching screech that was all bones and age. He shuffled out onto the gray shellac of the polished hall. “Follow the yellow line!” Quincy bellowed. Quincy fell in behind Mars as he followed the yellow strip painted along the center of the of the concrete floor. Quincy guided the inmates through the birthing process finally emerging through locked iron gates and a foyer with thick bullet proof glass.
The two white vans were marked with the logo of the Hammock Correctional institute and an official state seal. Coral and the other inmates moved into the vehicles, single file and silently attentive to Quincy and the other guards.
The daybreak sunshine chided motes of dusty reverence through the window glass in the van. The taboo of freedom rolled past the oily smudged panes of glass as they moved closer to the south Hammock Oak and Rose Sanctuary.
Coral perched in expectation of the route he was in visible expectation of the flower, the amaranth, the magic blossom that released him from bondage. The vans crowded the row of parking spaces as they pulled in at a sideways angle. The spoils of nature and lively freedoms unchained the inmates sensibilities as Quincy unlocked the silver metal doors of both vans. He marched the prisoners out in a neat row of assessment. Head count and assignments of labor were shouted out.
Coral stepped out onto the pebbled concrete parking area. The assurance of roses in bloom and the perfumed remains of flowers in acclaim filled the warm summer air. Quincy led Coral to a secret grove, an enclave that sported ragweed and bordered the outer edge of the sanctuary. As Quincy left Coral to his work at clearing the ragweed from the sheltered roses, He looked back and saw a furious Coral pulling weeds from the between the rows of flowers.
The mystery of the amaranth was shaded under a narrow ornament of oaks. Coral exhaled a musing sigh as he weeded the successive rows of rose bloom. Attending the lines of fate he admired the beauty of the amaranth, the magic trifle of god. Pausing for a moment, he went to the shade of the oaks and the resting place of the amaranth. He touched the delicate blossom with gentle care in holy reverence for its wonder.
Quincy ran the work detail for another four hours before he spotted the empty leg irons. Quincy yelled and whistled as the silent roses kept their divine secret.

Believers in Savannahs of Grass

Ron Koppelberger

Believers in Savannahs of Grass

The landscape was an eternal vision of hungry grass, all encompassing in it’s wide vista; The cry of a dozen dreamers and believers in emerald waves of fervor blessed the virgin skies and the bond of grass, unique in fray and fringed horizons, in the singsong grasp of affection and tender embrace, “ Ahhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmm, Ahhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa.” they sang in confederate breaths of exaltation, of invocation to the greater gods of existence.
The twilight bled bright orange and red, indigo edges and the gentle sweep of shadow. Warm suspirations and eager inhalations, they would come one of the believers thought. A great gulping ascension in blazon skies of passion, they would come. The dusk intruded in evening tide waves of darkness and the rolling winds caressed the believers in the grass, gentle, sweet and full of blissful weave. The sensation of what might happen and the promise overwhelmed them; the would come in great swirling eddies of light and rainbow wills of love, they would come and the believers would become the survivors, the predecessors of man in the aftermath. Ancestors in Mop-Gear and electric assurance , each in his own, the forefathers of the crow, the ravens tongue and sparrow in feathered predictions of civilization and the cares of mankind. They would come and the new love, the new way in paths of holy sustenance, in quests of Eden would flourish in the aftermath of nuclear dissension, in the aftermath of annulled existence; the believers would hold Excalibur the sword of fate and the salvation of innocence.
The embryo in wombs of contrition and rebirth, the rebirth of man and woman, and child and infant. They would come for the sake of god and eternity, forgiveness and forever. The believers waited in the vast savannahs of grass, and they believed in the wish, the need and inborn want for the future in the Midwest and the southern horizon. They waited and the grass spoke in hints of tomorrow, in rolling decrees of sleepy reunion with the cares of a lost civilization. They waited and dreamed of forever, the deep stand of eternal deliverance in the stars, from the skies in dark waves and amber glowing salvation, they waited open armed for the creation of a new day. In end they did come, for the seed of a dream, for the allowance of man and quests that assure the realm of sinless hope. The angels of third heaven, distant and embracing the divinity of the dreamers faith, embracing all that stands between the darkness and moted tempests of light. They came and the drama became a cacophony of happenstance and joy, joy for the gift given, the choice made by a few, the endless dialogue between heaven and earth.

High Kick (Surreal)

Nameless (surreal

The Flower Queen (A vampire for any occasion, the ball grand in parades of saffron flower and scented rose)

Ron Koppelberger

The Flower Queen

Norman Theat greeted the flower queen with applause, nods and winks, mysterious ramblings in passionate excuse for speech; finally he flexed his brawn for her consideration. She trifled her frill lace kerchief for an instant,
It fell to the floor and Norman grinned in response.
“ The poooovaaaateee of my sash is in your hands my love.” she said in a seductive passion of helplessness.
Norman pointed to the kerchief and said,
“ May I assist you in your need?”
“ Assist indeed maaaa love.” she cooed. Norman swept his arm back and bowed to the fallen sash. The lace and silk were warm against the tips of his fingers. He sighed and heights of Eden filled his thoughts. A satisfying coquette in rhythm with his heart. To steeples and tumult, to forges in harmony with sated desires, he thought. He bowed and a gentle surge of foresight, a premonition in ash and blood filled his mind. A penny for a drop of sustenance. The torn bluster of dire deeds and fangs in full bloom, unsatisfied, scarlet in charm and shadow, in hazards of blood, wary in rose petal desire. She touched the nape of his neck and hummed. “Sire in mortal confines of passion, in forevermore a taste as sweet as the sugars that fill the realm of sleep, sweet unattested sleep my daaahhhhaaaling.” She moaned in a soft sibilant whisper.
He shook and moved in slow motion, trembling by will of survival and determined love, the love of his life and rules of balance. The flower queen sighed and kissed the top of Normans scalp, tickling the skin beneath his hair with her fangs.
“ The same in ever sweet Norman.” she whispered as she took the sash from his hand.
Norman inhaled, smelling a coppery perfume of lilac and something akin to oily smoke. The flower queen left him a moment later as she wandered into the anxious maw of the dinner party. Norman thanked Christ for his life, nevertheless, he stared after her beauty with guilty desire and suicidal wont, his mind cloudy by the mists of an unknown charge and a chance meeting with the flower queen.

Desecrated

Ron Koppelberger

Desecrated

The fragile concealment of cobwebs and monoliths, the character of consummation and oblivion, It was a means of misery And yield in immigrant oceans of dark beauty. He was scathe less and in pure sabers of trust. A degree of whispering depth ran the length of his spine, a brand in degree of avatars and romance. The brand on his neck was a semi-circle, incomplete, a half moon, bought by servitude he wondered.
He had the unchaste division, a sanguine acquiescence in immortal sweeps of vast savannah and blooming birthright. The braids hung in gentle ponytail encouragements of flowing electric seam. Bonded to the desecration and frayed by the trespass of immense anti-harvest flames, tongues of heat given the light of hell. He saw fire and flowing waves of wheat, saffron god he thought. He growled and flexed his claws. He saw himself running wild free to the flame, “I must succeed.” the wolf sang. “The desecration of< STREAMS, PATHS AND THE GARDEN UMBRA, I MUST STOP IT!” He donned the cache of twilight tide and headed west, to the wind and the rain and the decree of great heroes, to the dominion of quiet slumber and intimate cinders in the dream of his future, perhaps the future of mankind, for the want of desolation of the promise of heaven, he was just a wolf and just a man, nevertheless those who would destroy hope and the wonder of a blessed dove stood fast in his path and he knew he was the key to humanities survival, the need of a yearning truth. The taste of ash wet his tongue and he knew the time was close. He saw the garden and the world in an instant and the vision was pure beyond those who would desecrate the secret, the bond of blue sky and endless wheat.

Dreams in Frayed Cotton And Straw.

Dreams in Frayed Cotton and Straw

Ron Koppelberger

The harmony of gossip in black, in blood and bidden assassins breath bore his title and even so dreams and nightmares haunted him in slow easy demonstrations of fear. He was Sable Warden keeper of the sentence, the purveyor of the gallows, the hangman’s knot and the edge of a triple bladed sword. He was the mask, the crimson spray and the dull thud of heedless punishment, he was the magistrates executioner and the lever was truly heavy.
Sable sighed and rolled amongst the cotton sheets and straw padding. He was caught by the half-light of a terrific phantasm, a sleep chartered by the wont of a decision, a choice given him in the moment of death.
He dreamed of starlight and dark suns at night, he dreamed of red smoke and flame, the better part of a battle wrought for the sake of the kill. With quiet stealth he saw the figure of a man in dark havens of silk, he was levitating and laughing. Sable knew and his knowledge bought the drama. The figure floated closer and he raised his triple edge. The hilt of the sword was solid silver with triple wolfs heads at the base. In the smokey light the wolfs eyes glittered, the eyes were blood red rubies, the blade the sharpest in the township.
Sable swung at the floating specter and screamed with a furious anger. The man laughed as the blade ripped through his mid-section tearing him in half and dropping him to the ground in a spray of blood and viscera.
Sable grunted in his sleep and shivered; in the dream he wore his executioners hood and silver tinged vestments of leather. He saw the sky as the twilight shone its light on the figure of the man. There was a twinkle of metal around the dead mans neck. Sable wiped tears of blood from the corners of his eyes and uncovered the flash of metal. It was a necklace hewn in gold and slick with the mans blood. The design was unfamiliar to him, stars, half moons and emerald slivers of stone. Sable grabbed the chain yanking it free, the spoils of battle he thought.
The sky bled bright orange and red and in the distance wolfs howled at the approaching blood moon. As the shadows closed in around him he moaned and rolled in the cotton sheets, sleep laden and borne by what was due he dreamed of crimson seas and the wont of an untrod path, the path of an unconscious passage, in dreams of love, loves lost and the end of his humanity. The blade lay next to him in darkness and he continued on dreaming of yet another battle. Sable swung his sword and the flesh was always pliant, the blade unforgiving as he sliced the head from a slender figure in union with the fight. Wooooosh, a moment, a breath of mere seconds as the head toppled revealing a woman’s face, it lay, face upturned, bleeding on his leather boots.
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” he screamed recognizing his wife’s face. The sheets tangled about his feet and he dreamed of a scarlet sash binding his ankles and a small child, a boy towing him through mud and ash and the embers of countless fires. Sable kicked and screamed as he was pulled along, he was helpless in the child’s undoubting sway. The bed creaked and shook as he screamed in fear and convulsive thrall.
In the dream, the source of his unconscious hell he kicked screamed and fought the child pulling him, dragging him toward unbidden ends, toward an executioners fear.
Haze filled the air for a moment then thousands of leaves, dry, crumbling, flittering and fluttering like a million moths, they fell down around them and buried them absolutely. The tugging ceased and suddenly the child was gone.
He stood amongst the pile of decaying leaves brushing the heap away from his face. He moved forward. Ripples moved beneath the thick blanket, fast scurrying toward him in circles, and the sound of children at play, singing. The sky flashed a brilliant fire red and the leaves disappeared only to be replaced by mist and a sparkling dew that covered a long sloping hill of grass.
The castle stood in the distance and in the front a large pole with long tethers attached at the top. A group of children circled the pole each holding a tether. “We all fall down…….” they sang. They were expressionless as they fell to the ground in silent play. Sable moved to the edge of the circle, the children had dark half moons beneath their eyes and were covered in leaking bloody sores. He thought, the harrow has passed.
He groaned and tried to awaken without success. Daring fate he moved closer to the castle and the arched entrance. Bitter acorns lay in wooden bowls on either side of the gate, pausing he removed a handful and placed them into his pants pocket.
A shadow appeared near the stone entrance. Tall in black shawls and silver blades covered in scarlet. The figure yelled like a wild banshee, “YIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!” the figure grimaced and swung his knife blade at Sables neck. Sable stepped back and swung the triple edge of his sword. The air parted as did the flesh of the banshee. Blood and a thick viscous spray of ash filled the air and stained his sword. The figure fell to the grassy ground and an awareness stole over Sable.
In his dream he remembered, he remembered the gallows, the knots, the fare of a blood thirsty throng. He remembered the face of the aggressor, hung months earlier. He touched his cheek, hesitant, cold covered by the executioners hood. Sable groaned again remembering his wife and son, the reason he had become what he desired in hate.
Near the end of his dream he cried and a single tear tempered his blade, then he awoke.
The sky was dark outside and the sound of cicadas’ filled the space between his ears. He looked at the blade next to his bed and the black hood he had worn since their deaths, his wife and son.
Reaching into his pocket Sable pulled out a handful of pealed acorns. He whispered, “let it be at an end.” as he chewed the bitter acorns. Leaving the castle keep he moved on toward what he wonted, life, rebirth and new days bought by the hope that he could regain what had been lost.

Seasons In Red Chill

Ron Koppelberger

Seasons in Red Chill

The snow was the mistress of fields in rolling cloaks of sleep. Unlucky he thought as he rooted for the secret stone. The walls of the cellar were cool, thick concrete and stone and he pressed against the coarse rock surface searching for the loose rock. The cellar was dark and quiet, heaps of snow lay against the oily surface of the small rectangular windows that sat flush with the ceiling and the surrounding walls.
Principle Fix coughed a heavy wheezy gasp as he shivered in the empty cellar. “It’s gotta be here.” he whispered in a gravely voice tinged by the bug he was suffering from. Principle coughed again and wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow. With fumbling childlike hands he found the loose stone and removed it with a gentle pull. His relief was unfettered by the knowledge that he was alone, He prayed, “Let there be other survivors god.” Principle reached into the cool recess and removed the tiny plastic case.
Holding the case in his hands he remembered the sun, the blue revolutions of sky and the shimmer of endless horizons in white, it had snowed the evening before, a foot at least and the wheat fields stood empty except for the dark shoots of weed and stray wheat between the furrowed acres of land.
Hail Wister lived on the neighboring farm and construction on the old stone swimming hole behind the rows of cow stalls had ceased, it was a giant hole filled with gravel loose stone sand, dry thankless soils. Hail had predicted a great swimming hole for the grandchildren and the missus.
“It’ll be the perfect pool for all of us…….swimming and tea.” he had exclaimed. That was last summer and here it was mid winter. The pond had never materialized, construction had gone on until the hole had bubbled mud like hot molasses and smoke.
Principle looked from the kitchen window past the fence row to the great snow filled crater. Hail and his family had left suddenly one day, without notice. Hail, Alma and the two gray hounds they owned had vanished in the space of a day. The day before they left the backhoes and bulldozers had ceased to dig the swimming hole. Hails truck had stood idling in his driveway for a few moments, gray exhaust puffing out a final Farwell to the life they had known. His truck was loaded down and full of household items, the things that had gone on for years in the ancient two story farmhouse. Here today and gone tomorrow, no rhyme or reason or goodbyes to remember.
The sun had been bright and the terrain cool, frosty, sharp with the snows of a sleeping horizon. Principle remembered turning the radio on.

“It’ a great time to find the signs

In Generville. Come visit our green tree shoppers

Mall, everything for a deal, everything

For a steal.”

The commercial continued on with a disco tune from the late seventies and a screeching hoot like an owl then the news came on.

“Every hour on the hour.”

Principle turned the volume up as he turned away from the snowy vista and the red and white kitchen curtains. Gossip, laughter and then a panicked announcer…..,

“……….a giant, it tore through Peresville

Common like a bomb, it rained and the meteor belched a red colored mist,

Red rain, the entire area was deluged by

the crimson shower.

I repeat a meteor landed in Peresville Common

Today leaving no survivors. The president

Has declared a state of emergency for the area and the state.

Once again a meteor hit Peresville Common

Where it apparently rained blood……”

Principle thought about the gravel pit, the swimming hole Hail had attempted to build, obscured acquired by the land, it lay in silent reproach to the efforts of a farmer, a failed attempt at Champaign and hotdogs, river springs and the dreamy castes that filled the grand law of want and will. He had left in defeat after years in the land. The salt of the earth, Hail had left without explanation.
Principle looked back out the window it was sprinkling tiny droplets of moisture, red, thick and viscous like blood; the snow was speckled red and white with tiny depressions like teardrops. The window reflected rivulets of moisture in long streaks, slashes of crimson against the glass.
That damn hole in the ground he couldn’t get around it. Hail had fashioned the guest and here it was in a moment of silent acceptance. Give me red rain to fill the cracks and crevices, come swim in my depths, but now it was deserted except for the snows, the red rains and principle.
Principle thought about all of those things, those moments…..seconds in motion as he removed the red and blue case from the hole in the wall. It was a first aid kit he had acquired from the good-will. Inside lay two gauze and a bottle of camphor oil. Principle took the camphor and rubbed it across his brow in the shape of a cross.
“To the hole.” he coughed, it was the cold or the flu or some kind of nasty bug he wasn’t sure….he knew he was sick. The hole…..go to the hole He thought.
Principle climbed the stairs, wooden slats splintered and old, they creaked as he tested his weight. The living room stood empty at the top of the stairs, Debbie gone now and the children grown. The sky shone bright through the pinkish red sheen on the windows. The hole, go to the hole he thought again; he opened the backdoor to the frost and the blood, to aged fields of wheat in summers gone by as he made his way to the deserted hole in the ground.
His feet came away in frigid layers of frozen scarlet, puffs of loose cotton beneath. Staring ahead he looked at the depression in the ground and sighed in quiet contemplation.
Great strands of ivy covered the surface of the snow in layers across the bottom of the pit and gouts of steam wafted from the center. The truck gone now, Hail had missed it his hole was gushing hot water and steam, Roses and daisies lined the edges growing up defiantly through the snow. His hole, and hails failure, hails reason for leaving. Principle exhale and moved down the edge of the slope where he stepped into the steaming water.
It felt good and he discovered that he really didn’t care about the rain much as he submerged himself in the springs warmth and asylum.
For a moment he dreamed of pools and pearls, he owned it for that moment, forgiving the sky and the blood that poured down around the secret oasis.

August Snow

Ron Koppelberger Jr.

August Snow

Copyright 2007

Chapter One

“Demons in bloodless abandon heedless, immovable wanting the

Possession of paralytic charms and the infidelity of

Elemental tangents. Disturbed in conclave window glass

And frozen in artic, gnashing consummation of souls in

Distressing late attrition”

*******

Naive, innate enchanting witchery in the sinew of a dream

And the welcome of a quest for the dauntless bustle of futures

Without sin, prophecy forgiven in the cashew of unbidden barefoot

Clarity and journeys to begin.

Soothsayers and the fate of a king in rag-bag vagabond

Discretion, searching the legacy of a fulfilling consigned

Venture and direction, crystal plums of glass and mosaics of raven eyed gypsy smoke. The pittance of a penny for a curious remedy and the

Forbearance of a sainted knight as the journey unfolds and the byway

Of delirium becomes light.

*******

An oath and tears from the eye of an angel in scarlet and azure

Tincture, a white witches spangle. The besotted touch of

Phoenix agility entwined by the breath of a flame and blessed ability.

A shield of luminescent two fold attendance and the ethereal sanctity

Of spiritual presence. A vow exchanged and the blossom of

Balanced blossoms in expectation of god rearranged. Spoken in the throe of

A precious wish, the mystery of sacred speech and unhesitating exhalation,

“Belie the shadow realm

And guide the sacred helm!”

The witches final exhortation as unfurled savannahs and sylvan paths

Align to the discretion of secret pearls and the sashes of destiny. To honor the special substance of alchemy and unbidden quests for the breadth of straw dogs and calamitous curtseying dragons in white, the adventure begins at the even-tide and the frayed seam of night.

*******

Plenteous and fulfilled in the trail of unbidden tears, a moonbeam and

Salubrious star allaying brave fears. The sacrosanct silent, pregnant prayer

To heavens and twilight wine, signifying the journey and thrust of time.

Thrashing thresholds along the path of tiers and stone already parched and

Feigning a desire for home. Ripples of wind and owls in vociferating

Vocation of wondering wisdom, the bleat of distant sheep and wolves howling winsome with worry for the hunt and incensed by the scent of a human, drizzling saliva and a famished grunt. Straight imbued with the direction of stitches in a long seam, he continues northward forever it seems.

Drowsy, overwhelmed by the victory of a night he collapses tatter Malian still seen in mist by demons in flight. Phantasms and portends of mythical call fill his conscious almost all, the brood of broadened ash and sunshine

Arrays of risen abeyance in possession of magical conveyance and curious

Enveloping crimson ascent in the hold of god’s consent.

*******

The morning dew and emboldened moted sunshine flittering against his pale skin as sleeping in hours times four and flourishing angels in glowing luminescence like sentinels akin. Dreams of Eden and patient cadence benevolently drawn in the truelove trifles of countenances passing, the winded wetlands of moss and lichen hue surpassing the charcoal tattered, gangly shadow of powers amassing. The corruptible morass proceeding a time to come, the journey irrefutably undone, by an unlearned question of wandering sum. Why is it you and why am I not the one? Evil shrieks of death and damp cattail fluff. He sleeps and discovers that the love of an angel

Belies the wish of a demon, The angel sings.

“You were simply dreaming.”

Balanced and alive aware of the quested blessing yet to arrive, Elements of delight in the conquest of spite.

*******

Chapter One Part 2

Intact, harbored in delicate folded safety and asylum he exhales,

Suspires and breaths the byway of hammock wreaths. Paths of glory and firmament above a journey of winter love. In defense, to the harbingers of sorrow and the eyes of darkness, his course caresses the saffron blooms

Of haloed guidance and the ramble of pilgrim rag tag abandon, “Onward North!” he cries to the blanket of warmth and the southern skies.

Sunbeam brilliance lights the way as he meanders through another day. Honeycomb delight and the sweet nectar of god along with the hungry

Abeyance of demons he is destined to trod. Mossy Lilly pad frogs and white

Stag infinity are companion in stride, relevant realms of phantasm

And spectral effulgence no longer hide. In conscious definition of

Suspended belief he finds little refuge or relief.

The shadow of malevolent wrath is found in the egress of swampy defiled,

Beguiled touches of earth. Chasing the brilliant rapture

Of dancing white light he finds the will and the remains of angel aspirations

Embody the fight and a moment of pronounced abolition in the face of inhuman sedition. A wraith of delinquent play practiced in glowering contempt,

“From my anger this human will not be exempt!” Unique, strange and faithful to the wary valor and promise of the quest, in necessary requiem

To a world without sin and the vary transcendent win he knows the sanctity and power of love is without rest. Servants of intended revolt and enticing creed waver in shimmering chagrin, expecting the swale and whim of a hero in disarray and feigned courageous endeavor, “In twines of slavery you will spin!” the wraith exhorts as it begins. Relevant buckwheat realms of visionary egress and the protection of prayers in strong echos of Sheppard

Testimony resound in warm exhalations of misty rain.

“Our father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.”

“Stop, cease, halt!” in hurtling screams and anguished alarm a wraith in impossible wrenching clawing confusions of one disarmed. Embraces accepted in veiled mist the spectral demon resigns to the bog of marsh and charcoal sentence, moss and vapory penitence. Animated vigor and the

Balance of benedictions spent on the ethereal gasp of passage lent to the will of god and the courses of sacred quest near the grasslands he shall rest.

A journey to conflict and the peace of grace adorned in the fashion of a myth

Overflowing with truth and summons to say, “I’ll be on my way!”

*******

Tramp roses and ragweed sprigs vehement and tender souled in northward

Gleam, the love of chartered butterfly wings and sighs of sweet smelling

Pine needle sap in the melody of stitched seams. Sunshine bugs and gnarled roots in the manger of dried leaves and fluttering silken cocoons. Straggly, scraggly irresistible beds of wavering grass, the exit of byways in demeanor of swampy morass. Immigrant feasts of dried fruit and capricious fermented wine, the benediction of enveloping airs and dreaming time.

Fastened by transit and the need to rest, horseback lanes and the twilight reins

Of sleeping saints and pleasing confessions of nightmare repose are best kept in the wont of a nighttime rose.

*******

The transmigration of souls in the grasslands of ceremonious fanciful presence and the way of plenty. Supposed in mists of beguiling, rollicking

Memories yet born, the kingdom of unlearned possession and dire obsessions with the veil shorn and truly adorned unto the vesture of a valley in wheat confederate and replete. The shuddering mass of those in northward grass and the fear of leopards in wait, he hears the rumble of thunder detonating with brutal warning. From ambling broad clouds and the phantasm of forces swarming. The flittering evanescent passage of deeply carefree shadows

And showers of daisy petal rain, detours of savage rite in the morning tide and day sojourns tumbling unto pain. Footfalls and ethereal angels in synchronous flight with the ebony cloak of a warm summer night.

He dreams a dream of rainbows and the city of brilliant sinless

Abandon. The nascent growth of a holy seedling tall in girth and concealed berth. The sudden swelling of souls in supplicating sumptuous earth. The wings of a dove and virgin splendid abbeys treasured in misty smoke

And reflections of miracle mazy mirth, the flames of the mantles rare scarlet hearth. Faithful breath and whispering alive the sweet blossom of prophecy will survive. In taunt fur and bristling growls the fangs of the shaman leopard will bawl.

“The grasslands will be the place of your fall, for here we be powerful some of us all!” The leopard grins in toothy glee he knows the man will see. The spectral warning fades to dust, onward north he must.

*******

Chapter One Part Three

Nursling skies of generous promise and resolute bodies

In incomparable conditions. Flourishing, sublime grass and opinions of contrite rendition. The cloudless firmament fulfilling the prophecy of relations in light and the bastion of earth and heaven, venturing an endless night. Burdens of ancient divinity and fathers of substance in precedented

Fulfillment and secret journeys, he accepts the provisions vaunted by the

Carefree sunshine spirit and yearnings, venturing terrains of contemplation

The shaman leopard is close to the source, cat-paw stealth and desires of adoring, hungry flesh, he pronounces the design of a hastened mesh.

Broods of blood and patchwork invitations to secret effect, divergent eruptions of gather stride, the seeker shamming interjects. Our cleaver forefathers fulfillment in clothed graceful greeting, proposed, innate and junctures of escape. Leopard contention and slothful repose accorded and supposed, descried by battle he guards the crossroads to paths of repute, a leopard in grasp and gape clawing from the center of eternity and a grassy maw, surrounded by the twilight horizon and all, in confident belief he sways and chants an armored relief, leopard speed and the sanguine need enduring the harrowed grain and the wrath of a distant rain , the end of tolls

And tenuous flooded play. The man shouts in exhausted prairie fray, “To the lord above the wings of a dove and the ruin of ruptured rifts, send this beast a sleepy cascading gift!”

Rearranged by reason the skies answer his prayer out of the holy season,

Rainstorms of scarlet and amber hue the leopard receives his purposeful

Due. Reserves of radical liquid abandon and prairie wind deepened in defiance and deceitful reliance, the shaman leopard attempts

To rescind the scarlet curtain of interrupted sin.

“Dire-damn and fire-damn, bulwark of dried grass

Deter this shower before your servant fall to cower in the

Mans morass.” Forestalled excluded by the labor of a man

And the angel in god’s nature and drenching embrace,

The leopard roars in his place.

“Edges of mountain and ledges of fountains be your fate, conditions of hell where you’ll be late!” He looks to the distant coasts and the hilly host of land in the lord, he has shorn the will of the leopard with sanctity

And more. The leopard collapses in a baptismal heap, for now he will remain asleep. Hordes of sleeping beasts, the immortal quest lay before the feast of pathways and byways in issued belief, the symbol of comforting relief. A luring religion and notched jagged luminescence in sovereignty and

The expanse of god’s presence, the way of the sun and the lay of the journey

He travels onward, done to seed and the dire need of an angel in pass and the one to the last. The eventide horizon and glowing waves of light, laid bare and in assembled tramp sojourn he sees the testimony in flight, vowing by adoration and supplication to the eternal fight, a beseeching voyage of purity, the vista of a sinless realm and the guidance of a sacred helm.

Seas of grass and skies of glass the secret of footfalls in fertile earth

And the ever present cure of tender mirth, an affected rebirth, wide and long he swaggers in song,

“ Declarations of love

And the lord above

The tendrilled kiss

Of a maiden in bliss

Resounding in symphonies of glee,

This endless swaying sea.”

*******

Refined in rumbles and tumbles of sage rugged seed, his eyes practice the test of an ornamented need, to loyal winds and the fall of speed, unto anointed flesh and the oasis at the evening-tide wine by the gentle currents of palm and tempered rest, the drink, the thirst of a flowing dream in ribbons and worlds yet unseen. Abilities of light and the way of second sight

In pleasures of perception and promising parcel….the liquid sorrow, the rippled pool of rain beckoning tomorrow in sated overflowing celebration
in whispers of possession and wild obsession . Citadels of sanctity

And balanced conceived of corrals in reflective shadow in the refuse of certain hopeless vows, of tended tendrils in craving unabiding thirst the oasis calls unto the wont of the man in the first. The guardian angel provides and by this thought he abides.

To be continued in Part Four………

New Poetry

Ron Koppelberger

Tranquil Mists

Ornate, perfumed by the scarlet glass of wells and oils

In flowing bouquet, delighted by the love of blossoming fragrance

And warm sated revelations in silk, the tranquil mists,

The happenstance of affectionate smoke in

Tendriled webs of absolution in

Velvety unrivaled reveries of

Escape.

Ron Koppelberger

Dusky Dawn

The final impulse in music and midnight wine,

A passion of alyssum bloom

And smoking guard, a tramp turn of seesaw swells,

The languid just for all and within the dreams

Of bare, cozy rose and loving wills

Of breath, the shadow in silhouettes of whispering

Coquette, a sated forever in spheres of eagle ascension.

The order of belief in pacts of dust and dusky dawn.

Ron Koppelberger

Amongst the Flames

Bamboo barricades and stone gardens in fresh bloom,

In cascading splendor, the primitive allure of

Yielded beauty and intimate truths, naked, laid bare,

To confessed oblique dimensions in difference to

Synchronicity, as if splintered by the seconds and

Twilight glow of hourglasses and moths flittering

Amongst the flames of revelation.

Ron Koppelberger

Mystified by Love

An important snare in hugs and kisses,

In ladies allure and gentle smiles of discipleship,

The buzz of bees in summer roses and spring seasons

Of verse, a gilded moth borne new by the bouquet

Of fresh scents and layers of blue sky, a drowsy dream

Troubled by the eyes of simple

Confederate prayer and bound compassion in tempests mystified

By love.

Ron Koppelberger

Intimate Drama

Naive errands in formidable shades of bred perfection,

A haystack in airs of permeating mystery,

Knowable by the wont of a forgiving freedom,

Entailing the seasons of purest innocence and asylum, by

Charmed dares of

                                                                            Intimate drama.

The Bog

Ron Koppelberger

The Bog

Fast answers to the brave resolution of Wallis K. Nassau sloshed and rolled with the thick morass of quicksand he was neck deep in. Was it preordained he wondered, was he destined for some fateful absolution, a medium of reconciliation with god?
Wallis had intended to throw the garbage bag covered corpse of his wife into the morass. A perfect conclusion to years of miserable garrulous arguing and infidelity upon infidelity. She had turned her back to him as she grabbed for the phone, her accomplice; she was finally asking for a divorce. She had chosen a new lover, a boy in the dawn of maturity, a child barely twenty-one. Looking over her shoulder she had given him a smug sneer of unbridled hate. In that moment the decision was made for Wallis; he grabbed a silver burnished vase embossed with archaic Egyptian legends, it felt good in his hand, heavy and dangerous. As she replaced the receiver he slammed the vase into her head, crushing her skull with a scrunchy crack.
There had been a spellbound moment of fear as he watched the blood pour from her head but it had passed and he had calmly sopped up the blood with a roll of paper towels, then he snuggled her into several garbage bags tying them off with a roll of twine.
Her body had thumped into the trunk of the car with a satisfying thump. He drove the Mercedes near the speed limit as he followed the curvy road to the swamp. Finally he pulled off the concrete two-lane highway onto a dirt two-track. The Mercedes bumped along nearly getting stuck in the muddy ruts. He had stopped the car at a thick knot of tangled vines and briar scrub. Opening the trunk he removed her body spending the next hour dragging her through the Palmetto scrub and pine tree saplings.
He had intended to leave her in the midst of the dense thicket when he saw the reflective surface of the morass.
Dragging her to the edge of the muddy quicksand he hefted her in. Unfortunately the twine around one of the garbage bags had coiled like a snake around his ankle and he stumbled in.
As the swampy grit flowed into his mouth and eyes he realized that the scream of a wild goose was echoing in the forest. It sounded a little bit like laughter, his wife’s laughter.

Divine Scream

Ron Koppelberger

Divine Scream

The trooper followed the fugitive into the warehouse; a quality of resonant power jolted the calm eddies of dust in the dark void of the empty warehouse. The trooper paused breathing in the sullied odor of rotting vegetables and lilac.
The fugitive stood in silent phantom shadow between the sliver of candent daylight surrounding the trooper in silhouette and the dusty trail leading to the sanctity of his extraction point. The trooper whispered, “Don’t move.” An exhausted tongue of solstice surrounded the trooper as the spring hinged door swung shut behind him.
The fugitive tilted his head backward, opened his mouth and screamed shattering the silent commune. Legends of ancestral continuum filled the moment with the passage of a few seconds, a few moments of tinctured, piercing sound as the fugitive continued to scream.
The trooper squinted in frozen fear as a brilliant fire surrounded the fugitive. Like the roar of a dragon he thought. The aluminum walls of the warehouse shook and the fugitive levitated to a horizontal position between the ceiling and the dirt floor. His scream echoed shrill and infinite. The trooper watched as the firelight vacillated and rolled in flame. A moment later it was finished, the fugitive spun in rhythm to the pulsing fire screaming, then silence. He vanished near the corrugated metal roof and the gentle rush of a gasping breeze shook the building. The trooper sighed and shook his head in disbelief. His thoughts in secret labor as he forced himself to forget the vision of fire.

Autumn Age

Ron Koppelberger

Autumn Age

The burning orange glow of twilight skies and sun burnished paths of eternity, the wind in synchronicity with the rows of wheat bloom and corn shoot, he lifts his arms in supplication to fall coronas of saffron glow and the faded underside of spring. Leaves quicken to brown and crackling exhaustions of billowy carpeting; crunching beneath his feet, flowing in rambling heaps around his ankles they flitter and fold in harmony with the onset of autumn fame. He blinks away the summer sparrow as the echo of crow caw fills the air and suspiring in breaths of fresh satisfaction the cool northern breeze blows like a mythical tempest.
He smiles a burlap buttoned scarecrow grin and moves through lanes of fiery summer to the changing chrysalis of autumn fare, an affirmation of pumpkin angels and concealed serenades of waiting winter wash, waiting in death yet animated seasons of change, waiting for unchained winds to shift in silhouettes of fall fathers and uncanny mysteries of rebirth, evolution, waiting for god’s yearly revolution and the hands of time beckoning the beginning of a new passage.

Careful Essence

Ron Koppelberger

Careful Essence

The blush of destiny in wayward courtship of unspoken resurrection, enthralled by the desert gossip , the inhalation of impulse and circles of bare passion. The rave of poise and the western eye endured the parade of dye, an abstract scarlet cast and a teasing cascade of quivering satisfaction, a mind in submitted eternal flux, immortal, fated and disposed to the anemic mischief of restless arrival.
She looped the silver sire around her undying fingertips delicate and honed to perfection. The smoke of mists and ethereal orchid incense filled the hidden secret sashay of sagebrush and matted desert grass, with the fury of thrones and groomed vampire adulation. She inhaled and coddled the charm. Her terra firma, her square quarter her portion of the revolt was in seesaw court, burning and flexing an alliance of one. She had to choose, chaff or wheat, wheat bloom or flame. The suspect innocence and wicked romance of gain and pledge defined her blessing, a sense of excitable means bridled her psychic mystery, the stones, the stones she saw the wolf and the circle of shadow. She enchanted a glance at the depth of garden seed and found natures of spirit. She would mount the current and move west toward the company of a promised purity.

The Mystic

Ron Koppelberger

The Mystic

The distance between hymns of primal myth and the vespers of his evening benediction was often the difference between draggled misery and reverent exhilaration. Cam Initio was a mystic of netherworld wonder in fabulous force. The rumor was that he could even raise the dead. It was not relevant that he was responsible for perpetrating the rumor or the subtle slight of gossip in the rumor, suffice it to say that Cam had once roused the concerns of a once drunken purveyor of the drink to an almost conscious level of existence.
To raise the dead, substance and secondhand life he thought , tantalizing revivals from the silent moments of death and the bliss a new dawn. He flipped one of the Taro cards over and the truth of a mystic revelation was unveiled; “The World” the card read, a world of life and death, fortune, fate and tales of rare precedent. To raise the dead, not some drunken oaf from the county tap, but to resurrect the flesh Cam thought. It was a bit like reading Taro, palms and tea leaves. Living with ghosts, ghouls and phantasms of taboo and admitted forbidden passage. It was a shaded talent that Cam would soon excel in, a candle to the myth and misery of past lives, loves and the adversity of universes, conduits in carefully interposed expressions of fear and love. Cam began reading the cards, resurrecting the dead so to speak with the fortune of the morrow and portents unbidden, unsoiled by past failures in chance. He would read and this time it would count for the wont of an unseen force availing the spirits of the newly alive.

A note From Ron in a moment of Rising import.

The design of a dream depends on the view from where help wonts its favorite.  In searching for the creation of an eploration in title, in post, in signs of life and the breath of a moment,  the options are limited to the love of a line in adress, a wolf sleeping at peace, an ivory tower built for the movement of time and static.

Shadows

More Than Four Hundred

Ron Koppelberger

More Than Four Hundred

Rey Tribe downed the viscous glass of blood with a relish abandon rivaling the needs of a starving peasant. The walls of the room were a thick gray brick and motor covered with Persian tapestries from his errant youth. The strawberry stain coating his lips marked the coming of the four hundred and the rule that would pervade the province perhaps even the entire country, possibly the world.
Rey read the passage from the book “Nocturne”.

“By the demons roost and the will of what’s

Bought by the silver of a dead man’s troth,

We convoke and conjure the four hundred

For the promise of a kings desire to

Rule the realm of man and beast,

From lesser to least!”

Rey finished the glass of blood and looked to the wash basin in the corner of the room. She lay there, her life blood leaking from the open wound in her neck. She had been a virgin brought to him by his secret guard. Licking his lips he whispered, “Yer a tasty morsel for a future king my love.” Smiling he waited for the four hundred.
In the end Rey was overwhelmed by the four hundred demons he had conjured. They pulled out his entrails and ate his eyes as he screamed the screams of the damned. The kingdom fell to darkness and smoke, a hundred years of slavery unto the demons rule.
One day in hell Rey spied a great oak, longing for his youth he climbed it, near the top he slipped, the smoke and darkness of hell was his undoing for he did not see his precarious height. Rey fell to the ground in a heap and suddenly the land, the kingdom was blessed by light, the four hundred returned to hell where Rey lay by the tall oak. In the end they would test him for the better part of an eternity.
Near the edge, the outer boundary of time Rey pondered his fate as fires ravaged him, “If only I hadn’t slipped, if only I hadn’t called the four hundred.” he whispered as he was seared from top to bottom.

The Hood

Lost Ghosts

Drunken Dry

Ron Koppelberger

Drunken Dry

Whiskey ice and shots of silvery thirst, all in all the dream was in drunken silent caress, a thirsty request for beads of sweating frost, filled to the brim Jim. He saw more inspiring seasons and moments in revolving mirrors of rain, sweet rain, clean air and sober harvest yet all the drink cried, “Deliver me unto the dry tongue, the parched lips of deserts alone, of desolate abandon, deliver me in gulps and swallows of silk!”
He worried the thought for a few seconds and minutes unto days before he found the melody of dry ground, a foothold purchased in long drunks and tattered seams, bought by the pain in sleeping illusions of peace, borne of loud puking heaves and convulsing sweats.
He found the bone dust, the sand, the warmth, the sun, the hot winds of what one owns in the midst of chaos and cure. He owned dry drunks and days between the longing and that, in value, was the treasure he had sought for years. Through it all he had his vision, an endless horizon of dry wind and blue heaven, this is how he survived the drinks enchantment.

The Hermit (I am available to do artwork for your website or magazine at will806095@bellsouth.net)

The Mistress of War

Delusions

The Cube

Mirrors

Royal Walk

A Cause for Obsession

Ron Koppelberger

A Cause For Obsession

The light was fading in gentle degrees of gray, Whip Best insisted on a certain level of independence. He thought in careful silence as the red light flashed on the ancillary freezer; thirty-eight degrees the old-fashioned dial read. Whip tapped the dial and hummed, the backup generator was working nevertheless the freezer was growing warmer by the minute.
The storeroom was attached to the back of the three3 bedroom ranch house, he had added the extra room after buying the ranch, for futures bidden in human dominion, for the peace of an eternity in watchful purpose; he had added the freezer unit with the little cash he had left and it was woefully inadequate.
A moment of decision he thought, to contain the end, to hold the darkness at arms length, frozen, still waiting the breath of warmth and blood, the unit held utter darkness, the essence of evil condensed, pared down to what was a manageable quantum.
He had found the ancient cask in an old refrigerator, abandoned next to the west wood. He had thought of children suffocating and locked coffins. In the end he had grabbed his tools intending to remove the refrigerator door, thus leaving it safe.
He had opened the aluminum and steal door with a tug at the handle. The seal around the door sucked in air as he swung the door open.
The cask was laying on the metal slats of the bottom shelf. He remembered grabbing the cask and the sudden whispers of knowledge that filled his head. The essence of evil, in its purest form, just a sip, just a sip! He had known, the horizon had gone dark, edged by fire and approaching shadow, just a sip fer yer soul Whip. The moon was distant in the twilight sky, blood red revolving in turns of prophesy, dire spinning silhouettes, just a sip Whip, it coaxed. He knew what was contained in the cask as a shawl of evil fell down around him, the woods and the refrigerator. Just a sip Whip!
In an instant he had seen the cask frozen , benign from the cool circulation of ice flow and winter air. He knew as he took the cask home and prayed. Must keep it cool he thought as great geysers of blood filled his mind like old faithful in bloom. Whip had kept the cask frozen ever since.
Tapping the refrigerator he read the dial, forty-five degrees. The sky grew dark outside as ragweed sprouted all across town. The air filled with an orange sandy mist and the eyes of every child in town turned scarlet. Whip grabbed the freezer door handle and yanked the cask from the melting ice in the bottom of the unit.
Running to the kitchen he threw the TV dinners and frozen peas from his kitchen freezer as he slammed the cask into the ice box.
Leaning against the refrigerator he panted and sighed in relief. The darkness abated and he thanked god. The shadows could wait, for how long he thought, for how long?

In Good Health

Ron Koppelberger

In Good Health

His defiance and grouchy persuasive savagery would soon be renown with the unfortunate tokens of trespass and an evasive thistle. They had Sundays blessing, the whole of them, but Monday was another day and tomorrow would tell the humble balance of his resolve.
Only three hours to go, they had used toilet paper in his trees, spray paint on his house and rocks against his now shattered windows. They had flattened the tires on his car and beaten him to a broken twig of uncertain existence.
He opened the bottle of chilled whiskey and toasted the window pane, a reflection of revolution he thought. “Here’s to your health!” he said raising the frosty bottle to his parched lips. He had tied lengths of wire in a crossfire circuit of woven gossamer, invisible silk, spider web sanctity through his yard. He had sharpened the stakes and dug the pits deep enough to cage a wild tiger. He cradled the shotgun in his lap and as the twilight drew its indigo cloak across the horizon he prayed, prayed to the shadows and silhouettes of an evening promise. He prayed in earnest supplication to the gods of vengeance and retribution. He flipped the light switch and settled himself down in front of the window; it was 12:01 AM.
A pleasant vista of rose blush and oak lined the yard and the beige shutters emphasized the eyes of the front windows, eyes of seduction in wooden thrall and sheets of glass, a taboo of blood and wrath, a defiant grace stepped in the promise of revolution and anger….tempting the violence, tempting the destruction of clapboard dreams. Simple coble stone pathways and loose garden hose tangles in subdued secret arrangements of invitation.
The car full of men pulled close to the curb, music throbbing; his heart pounded wildly and he raised the cool whiskey bottle in appreciation. The shotgun cradled in his lap clicked as he cocked it.
“Here’s to your health gentlemen………here’s to your health!” he whispered.

A Legend By Wing

Ron Koppelberger

A Legend By Wing

The derelict myth justified the impressions left by flourishing lemon sun glow, in wrangled perfection and the blue skies of endless summer. The dream was within the winged union of secret honors and agreements of surviving wombs. The serenity of its environment was in covenant with the dream and the dream was divine.
He exhaled and whispered, “Illusion or madness, possible or defended by god?” The myth moved in slow supple waves of lengthened berth and essential utterance, “The renown of accommodated seals crown the acceptance of redemption and common voyage unto the summons of an immigrant sunrise.”
The man endeavored to hold the westward horizon as the legend flew in lazy circles about his sky and off toward unseen coasts and inland seas, away yet pointing to the harvest of saffron and wheat in the distant fray.

Whispering Brand (New Poetry)

Ron Koppelberger

Whispering Brand

Wicked decrees in ash and blackened lace sash,

Desolate by empty measures of chance and fate,

In deserts of naught and the tempests of

Wild diversion, by dry cactus thorn and bones in dusty array,

Falling in thrall of stony hearts and cool eyed

Stores, a prayer amidst the fury of stumbling

Deliriums in scarlet, in wounded reach, the gulping precipice

Of what becomes a need for love and embracing passion, unto the sun

And the stars in quiet revolutions of longing,

By hearts trod, by silent survival and

Whispering brand.

Cotton Candy (new Poetry)

Ron Koppelberger

Cotton Candy

Sweet dander and glowing roses

Of fine-spun sugar, a delectable savor

Of necessity and unbroken youth, the tears of tolerable

Desire allayed and comforted by

The nectar and web of cotton confection,

By the promise of dreams and candy wishes, by the

Tangle of warm treasures in wanton tastes of

                                                                              Cotton candy.

Ice Milk (New Fiction)

Ron Koppelberger

Ice Milk

Sterling Glory spooned the icy treat into his mouth with perfect grace and compliant savor. Sweet blessed ice milk, a touch of heaven in a mystic hell. The bleached white cloth fluttered and caught in the arid breeze. The makeshift infirmary was little more than a tent begat and full of a never-ending array of patients all ill with the morphous virus, the shifting demon that wasted the vital essence of life.
Sterling stood near the entrance savoring his ice milk. Cool snowstorms in the midst of a broiling insanity, he had screamed and raged until the requisition had been fulfilled, rationed consideration, cool in the promise of a mosaic of earthen pleasure. He saw himself as a child, grinning with his quarter as the compact white cart revealed its treat. The ice crème man handed Sterling a cup of Vanilla ice milk and he savored the moment in an accomplished nearness to god, a panacea for the following of man.
Sterling watched as the mess hall guard and nursing staff made the rounds. Each and all received a cup of ice milk. Sterling realized what the distance was between today and yesterday and tomorrow and forever an eternity of life. “Ice milk, MMMMMMMMMAAAAHHHHHAAAAA.” he whispered as he fingered the quarter in his pocket.

When the Coast is Clear (New Fiction)

Ron Koppelberger

When the Coast is Clear

Persia Temperance saw the dead reckoning of an intimate, unshackled blood lust, it was a secret passion, a blessing, a blessing bartered for the eternity of forever. The merger of vampire raves and mortal conclusion was a consideration of the utmost for Persia. She liked being a vampire and her desires were weaned on blood, the blood of humans.
She licked the beaded scarlet droplets from her chin like a cat. She waited, she had to be sure the coast was clear. She hadn’t been interrupted in her pursuits with the young couple and she was roused to a sated lethargy. In a poised silent calm she stood before the plate glass window of the apartment window. She watched and waited for the streets to empty.
The Willena Bog was her asylum and she only had a few precious hours to return to her resting perch. There were vegetables scattered across the polished wood floor and parquet tiled kitchen. The couple had been out shopping in the nightly market that marked the town of Jenuessee’s Carnival celebration. Persia thought about the Hammock and the jungle wild, the tribes from ancient times, the subtleties had changed for Persia with the passage of time. The last hundred years had seen radical changes and some improvement for her lot. She always exercised caution as the tides of time were in her favor as long as she was careful in the hunt. The tribes had been savage in ancient times and the mortality rate, even for those who were immortal was low, nevertheless she had survived and her line had flourished.
The couple had been unsuspecting, unaware of her presence in the loft apartment. They had fallen to her thirsts with relative ease. Her foray into town was a curious one this evening, the carnival was in full swing. She wouldn’t be seen. The wild music and the painted denizens created a perfect air of secret purpose, still she waited lest someone see her leave the apartment. A band marched in crazy screams and beaded castaway dreams below and she realized her time to leave the apartment was at hand. With a passion for her safe haven she moved out into the streets, by back alleys and cobblestone she made her way back to the swamp and the frayed edge of an eternal night, a night marked by her unbidden desire and the wonts of a vampire life. As it was, she found solace in the fact that she had filled her belly and marched in a parade of frivolous abandon. The swamp called and she availed the call, her mind on the ethereal light that was her life, her existence in distant vistas of vampire heaven.

The Super Highway (New Fiction)

Ron Koppelberger

The Superhighway

Within the boundary of sense and fate, a covenant in procession, the man followed the route, like a superhighway. He was mystified by the length of the journey, a trip in perfect flawless rhythm with the heartbeat of the superhighway, Fifty-seven miles to Tampa the green reflective sign read. He tapped out a cigarette and lit it, a few cinders fell from the tip to his lap. He brushed them toward the floorboard leaving a gray smear on his black slacks.
The twilight-tide sunshine, orange and indigo velvet lit up the endless expanse of highway. Subtle designs in shadow swayed and yielded the welcome of his excursion to Tampa. An undeviating spear of concrete the superhighway derived from doubt, championed the conquest of stark barriers in feasts of fear. He was reincarnated in perfect psalms and in the instant of a breath, the purpose of infinite speculation. Reborn in union with the superhighway and its intent. He exhaled a puff of smoke in ancestral wonder, primal in reciprocating waves of fog. He reckoned with the knowledge that the divinity of custom and circumstance had brought him full circle. The sign on the sign of the road rolled by. Out loud he whispered, “Fifty-seven miles to Tampa.”

Aria In Shadow (New Fiction)

Ron Koppelberger

Aria In Shadow

The embryo grew in news and the tramp near the edge of Promise Nod looked to the name of Aria, the violent summoner of arid winds and fiery desire, a witch of reputation in promise.
He faced the front shingle on the ancient cottage door, all gray with scarlet lettering, “Aria The Steeple” it read. Humbled by the shame of poverty and the passion he felt for Aria, he stood waiting for her acceptance. A father to be he thought, a child in due by the fates and by the wont of a black witch.
Polly Dray knocked on the rough hewn oaken surface of the witches door. A rapt gift of practiced patience stole his haggard face in waves of anticipation. They had met by the Western Glenn, she in dark eyed attire, a rare mix of magic and satin ease and he in suffering regret, a pale faced clumsiness prefaced by the rags of misfortune.
She had come to him in a dream.
“Bidden by the wont of child, a dark need for the birth of an apprentice.” she had whispered in his sleep. She led him to the edge of a glass pond, silent, secret and in clandestined shadows. They had given the sky a moment to remember; twilight, scarlet desires in fervent passion, they had followed the crimson heart of ecstasy , of bliss borne from the grip of wedlock, in sin, darkness and fire, bought by the unbidden features of broken taboos and uncommon affections. They had created from rags and silk, a bond by blood and the cleaver eye of a witch, Aria the violent and Polly broken in spirit, he only aware of the moment, the due he needed to climb the delicate petals of stature and life.
A turn for the better he thought as he stood waiting for the door to open; the arms of an angel he thought of the witch, my sweet Aria blessed by the gods and her husband to be.
A few moments later the door swung open unfurling darkness and the trappings of his illusion. In naive currents of desire he thought, her rouge is bright and her lips sweetly shimmering in scarlet whispers of song.
Aria stood before him, covered in blood, apron smeared scarlet by her bloody handprints. His look of cloudy delirium became a look of surprise and dismay, yet he had known, with a surety he had been aware. She crossed the gulf of Polly’s shock and pulled him close.
“Sweet man, tis just a moment before twilight and the silhouette of night-tide saints, calm yer fear and cool yer dismay!” she hugged him close and the vapors were sweet as well as coppery with the violence of the witches passion. She kissed him gently in convincing measures of bond.
The sound of night thrush filled the wild around the cottage as the moon cast its light across the small clapboard house, the breath of drama told in a grim distraction.
Hear ye!” she said in his ear quietly.
“See ye!” she nibbled his ear breathing warm summer winds and daisies into his accepting consciousness.
Aria led him into her asylum. The door closed shutting out the evening sky and the path he had traversed to be with her. He saw soft shades of amber light and the odor of baking bread filled the air. He was enchanted not seeing the body of the man, rended and broken, dismembered and slashed in crimson, splashes of death. He didn’t see the cold edge of the blade laying near the corpse nor the smile in darkness, in secret cankers and charcoal soot.
Aria patted her stomach and grinned wider. “Our baby dear Polly, we’ll raise her to be a queen, a princess in power, to avenge your rags and my prison, to become the pasture for our devoted moment of vengeance dear Polly.”
The table the body was laying on dripped pattering tears of blood against the burnished oaken floor, pooling in a savagely satiating aura of red. Aria stepped back sliding in the sticky mess, nearly falling and for an instant he saw her, ancient, bleak and candent by the fires of hell, in her moment of weakness. His eyes became clear for a moment, just the briefest of admittance and a sleepless gathering of strength crept into his countenance. By dust and roses he thought, what wore the witch, his sweet Aria what wore her.
Pulling him close again she sang in his ear.
“Like sacred storms and the rain of tangled dreams, give me my cleaving affection in dire confection.” Polly listened and wavered from his insights, perhaps she was an angel in dark airs of passion. She touched his eyes and sent him a vision. Sunshine and spring flowers in bloom, children playing and sparrows flittering black then white, black then white, white and black. He opened his eyes then, seeing her for what she was, dark, evil and angry; nevertheless she loved him and he was frayed, burned by the struggle and she was carrying his child in her womb.
Sprays of sparrow song and dandelion bloom anticipated the birth of Arias baby. Polly saw darkness and the same expectation in Aria’s eyes.
She sweat blood and smoke, fire and wrath. He looked to the midday sky and thought, it had been nine months brewing, stirring in the mists of fate. Happenstance was discreetly convincing the wind and the tempest currents. Polly wrestled and wondered for his child, for the troth of a darkness borne in ecstasy and wont. He wondered and his contemplation secreted the wisdom of one who was enchanted by the notion of flowers, azure heaven and god, guiltless deliverance. He struggled for nine long months finally deciding. She’ll be my daughter named beauty and love, balanced by my devotion. Polly thought again and to the edge of the darkest horizon. He would end the witches life after his childs birth. For the winter to come and times of hunger, he would steal the child and the breath of the witch, the steeple, the killer of innocence, for the promise of his soul and his daughter. He would take her the moment his sweet salvation was borne into the world.
Aria lay in wait for the hint of her achievement, her daughter, in spasms and convulsions of birth, in revolt, in revolutions tide she screamed and fought the pains of child birth. In an instant the child was borne, into the light and shadow of Polly and Aria, crying new wanting the things of the world and her mother lay in reverie, in asylums of warmth, candent and in the way of sacred angels, her father strong with resolve.
She dreamed and cried and thrashed at the world, tiny tears sliding across her ruddy checks in infant passion.
Polly drifted between the realms of shifting day and a suffering night, he best a twilight thought. She’ll be away from the witch if only I can manage he said through a sudden and overwhelming lethargy. Polly’s eyes widened and Aria laughed in salt and flame, loud, hysterical and wild. She laughed and convulsed in rhythm with the childs tears, her daughters power.
The baby touched her check and Aria screamed as a bright sun appeared there smoldering her flesh and burning her to ash. Polly touched the child, his daughter borne of a dark witch and a vagabond and his hand came away shriveled, old by degrees of time as the future spun ahead.
Brick and mortar replaced the forest glenn and the sound of airplanes, cars and scurrying footfalls, the footfalls of countless people filled the air. Polly saw his daughter for a final moment before he crumbled to dust. She was laying on a city sidewalk, the concrete jungle of Promises future. Passerby glanced apprehensively down at her, looking for her mother and wondering why a baby was laying in the middle of the busy crowd. Her writhing newness was the birth of an era a time in passing seconds and days of fast evolution.
She waited for her parents in the shadow of a brilliant light. A swan and a black and white sparrow, of the suffering witch and the desire of a tattered castoff.
On her way to work the woman, kind in expression reached down and took the baby to her bosom, away from the hard surface of the concrete sidewalk. She noticed the pile of rags laying next to the child thinking of a homeless mother or father.
The woman smiled and sang.
“Hush little baby, go to sleep.” The baby grinned and cooed bound by the promise of an era given to the romance of a secret future.

***

Twenty Years Later

She was twenty years old now, no longer that innocent babe. Cloaks of light engaged her wherever she went, nonetheless. She stood on the top floor of her new penthouse apartment and sighed as her husband whispered into her ear.
“It’s great isn’t it hon?” he said as he kissed her ear.
“It’s just beautiful Shaver, just beautiful.” The sound of music and singing, tribal dark and wild drifted up from the glossy burnished cedar floor. “Must be a party downstairs.” she commented to Shaver.
“Must be honey, maybe we’ll go down and introduce ourselves.” he offered casually. She looked at him for a moment wondering.
The city skyline was gorgeous she thought in clouds of distraction. She stared over the rail to the balcony below. There were people milling about the patio and they were laughing as they ate crackers and pate’ The sky grew dark for an instant as she heard the name. Aria, the woman on the patio was starring up at her and smiling.
“Come on Aria, the band’s great!” she looked away and went back into the apartment.
For a moment the woman, Aria had looked old ancient and familiar. Shacking her head she walked back into the penthouse. She could hear her husband talking to someone on the phone in whispers.
“Hey honey, we got an invite for the party.” he said excitedly. She remained silent thinking about the child she was carrying.
“Great honey!” she called back as she prepared herself for the party. “That’s great.”