The Curse

Ron Koppelberger

The Curse

Realms of sated light shone in arrays of beauty on the gentle features of her brazen countenance. She carried the bond of perfection and allied seasons of youth, in childlike innocence. Her eyes shone fire, hearth flames of desire and the essence of passionate enchantment. The infinite and mysteries of unbound secret turned down with her pouting lips, in mists, in ethereal assurance, in still silence and breaths of sustained hunger.
The want of a dreaming groom, the needs of a passing parishioner, in worshiping admiration and enveloping symmetries of time, the statue was a poised supplication unto the gods of bliss, the forces of ageless possession and absolute dominion in the love of a better dream; a dream of tomorrow and the twilight before, a dream of yesterday and the dawn after, he had personified a dream.
His craft in sculpting, his forte in the chiseled alabaster features of an angel, the unbidden thrall of sweet ecstasy, blossoms in icy winters, rain in dry deserts. She was his creation, his expression of divinity, rapture in truth, and the world knew, and they cherished, they exalted, they bought the burden of a glance toward the stone goddess and he became jealous with want for the secret he had revealed. The curse, the moment of incomparable comparables, nothing would suffice and to naught the effort at new creation, for want of a mate she would long.
He was betrothed in imperfect union and he obsessed with the end of his life never quite achieving that sated perfection for all his fame and fortune and the pampered talents of those who live easy, wealthy, well fed by the starved desire for true love.
He saw this on his deathbed, he had achieved and it had been his curse as well as his immortal salvation.

Duck in Degrees

Ron Koppelberger

Duck in degrees

The review was an important step in the process, eat, eat, and eat again. Chintz Toss was the foremost master of grilled, baked, roasted, toasted and
Broiled duck. Chintz dreamed duck , dressed in squat duck style and his favorite tune was Disco Duck. The review, he had to focus on the review. One day defined in fine eclectic script, Chintz received a breath of new life, a note of invitation,

“Vex, worry, distress ye heart

For naught, for luck come

And dine with us in gleeful

Affairs of rare duck!!!!!”

The note was signed Cleaver D. Delight purveyor and director of “Hungry Wolf” 210 Red Leaf Lane. Chintz could almost taste the delicious fare. “yum, yum, yum.” he muttered in nervous expectation. The endless progression of duck had finally begun to intrude upon Chintzes’ pleasure, the seduction of a fine meal, in distant horizons and close comfort. He thought of the precious invite. The will to carry on for the sake of flavor and hungry diversity. He knew the meal would revive his interests. To assure the divinity of professed pallets and express taste, he thought. He’d make the Hungry Wolf the bother of garden marms and brawny croakers. Forget the vegetables and frog legs, tis a season for duck and duck and duck. Chintz Marquis Toss dressed in gilded cotton adornments and delicate slippered hands; the white face powder gave him a gaunt definition. He was in earnest urges to exclaim the work ethic of feasting fortune; he slipped on his long black leather boots, leather and expressive. The Hungry Wolf, worthy of my conspiracy in affection for the feathered quarry, he thought as he swept the silken cape around his shoulders. The day moved forward and near noonday tide he made his way to the Hungry Wolf.
The front door was a silhouette done in delicate sprigs of amber glass and
Goldenrod design while the handle was a crystal globe, rainbow hued and in spears of sunshine glow. Chintz touched the knob expectantly as he rotated the crystal. The door gave way to it’s secret and the gravel strewn floor rolled and waved before him. Chintz wanted and continued to dream of duck. He stepped forward into the den of hungry wolves and divine wilds. The tables were wistful emerald spheres with enormous boulders as chairs, large, gray and crimson splashed with feathered gore and bird droppings.
Chintz gasped “breath Toss, Breath!!!” the tender remains of duck soufflés’ and broiled hare stew sat in a giant cauldron nearest the table to his left. The smell was enticing and his stomach intervened as he began shoveling the stew into his practiced mouth. Thus the hunters who had enticed the fare of a fine meal sat in patient compliance with Chintz and his obsession. Chintz faltered for just a moment as the hunting party whooped and howled and growled. The gallery was full, beastly aggressive. Chintz finished and belched in compliment. The paw of one of the hunters touched the gentle throbbing rhythm of his carotid artery and in a moment of realization he understood the penalty as he was devoured in grand fashion.
(The turn is torn by the feast of excess.)

Dreams of Perfection

Ron Koppelberger

Dreams of Perfection and passion

The feeling was that the dress of both queens and court jesters in drama, was narrowly defined by her desire to be. Emma Spoons was nearly five hundred pounds of overflowing misery, her burden was the shelter and clothing that would define her as a cognizant human being, consciously worth something more than her suffering weight. Her task was a difficult one. Her home had shrunk around her as she had increased in size, her asylum, her sweet embrace of dark corners and shadow secretly desolate.
She stood before the oak and cherry wood mirror primping and debating the bright red and rose blush gown that adorned her in vast sheets of cloth. The fringe was a daisy bloom, white lace and saffron yellow. She contemplated her attire for an instant and sighed, she was pleased with the dress. She found comfort and peace with the bright array, a simple solace, fresh blood and love and passion. She defined the dress in term0s of. Acceptance or denial, and she knew the conquering denial, denials in a whispering nag, a breech in her vision, the rotten bastard that reminded her that she was fat. She heard it as a persistent whispering, a manic rebuke, “ your fat!” it said “and nobody loves you!”
Emma arranged her white neckerchief and pursed her lips. The doorbell sounded and Emma’s heart leapt. Answering the door she put on her sexist smile. Announced, discovered and defined in handsome poise, the sandy blonde haired man touched her check with a gentle brush of soft caressing desire. His fingers traced the line of her lips and she sighed in gentle rhythm to the symphony of joy that overwhelmed her in waves of romance.
The door soon closed and the flaxen dream dissipated. Emma smiled and turned on her television set. Simple pleasures were often the best pleasures. Brought forth in silence and made real by the dreams of a soul in transit, never judgmental and chaste to the desires of true freedom, the secret lover, the clandestined stranger who arrived in her minds eye, her fascination, her dreaming surmise and accepting betrothal. She found solace in the mystery of the stranger and in portion she was nearly perfect, defined by the conscious dimensions of imagination, boundless and eternally balanced. All in possible arrays of love and the promise of a stranger bought by the wont of a lonely need.
.

Orphan Picnics and the Bandit

Ron Koppelberger

Orphan Picnics and the Bandit

The sign wasn’t altered in it’s exclamation, nevertheless it was an indicator of past terrors, the harbinger of wild rumors and bloody exaltation, it read,

“Do not feed

The bears!!!”

The sign was a chipped gray and scarlet, the lettering a bold exclamation of warning. Handy Bandit sighed and touched the roughly speckled surface of the sign. The surface was covered in spatters of crimson, blood perhaps he thought. Wrinkling his brow he surveyed the pine straw littering the ground, the piles of freshly scattered dirt, in telltale mounds, half buried in moldering leaves and torn dirty soils, a row of graves.

“Do not feed the Bears.”

He read again as his sneakers left impressions in sporting claim against the blood sodden dirt.

“Do not feed the Bears.”

The graves were haphazard constructions, built in grizzly instinct and scarlet paw. A crow sang, yelled from atop the pine bows, “caw caw.”
Handy sat the picnic basket on the dry patch of earth and opened the burnished lattice lid. The scented desires of starving campers and hiking hunger poured from the basket. Fried chicken, Potato salad, and neat containers of potato chips.

“Do not feed the Bears”

He whispered reverently, by prayer and eyes revolving in desires of chance.
Handy unfitted the restraining straps of the backpack and removed a blue and white checked blanket. The nature of his aloneness forebode reason and rational as he layed the blanket across the bloody soil. The crimson tinctured the blanket in disdain, in warning. Handy closed his eyes for a moment as he sat down on the blanket. He saw seas of scarlet and suns blazing amber in painful clarity. The mists of a wrath untold and blind by the need of what sapphire eyes and mulberry wont express. Eating the call of ravaging danger and tears of senseless diversion. Handy ate chicken, potato salad, and the crisp chips lined neat in stacks.
The balance of night and day divided the hours as handy ate and thought. In the end he concluded the twilight ceremony with a prayer, “By Gods grace we take the wisdom of sense and the desire to live in passions of safe futures and asylum.” He prayed in quiet breaths of new resolve. The night sang sure and the remnants of old chicken bones and plastic containers marked the sodden ancient soil, by bidden release he was reborn and given the will to survive.

The Bundle

Ron Koppelberger

The Bundle

Hay bales and ragweed chocked fray, pumpkin smiles and orange twilight repose, wisdom and understanding autumn stead, the typical screams of trick or treat and candy corn, Carmel chew chaw, managed misty acclaim and the boundaries of a porcelain treasure. There were two minds concealed in domain, a mind to cry in throes of exasperation and a mind to celebrate the sanctity of beauty and requited wishes, fulfilled quantum’s………a dream in the dress of fortune and fate.
The shiny porcelain face blinked at Niamey Friendly with happy bubbling purpose. She had found the bundle on her front porch wrapped in a dirty shammie, a doll, a baby doll. The local children had left the doll on Niamey’s porch as a Halloween prank. “That old hag will go crazy!” Bobby Perkins had laughed. “Crazy morning, crazy day crazy, crazy all the way!” they had sung on her front walk. Niamey had repeated a prayer and sang to herself, “Little baby coddle coo, little baby what shall I do? A means to an end and angels that send the souls of babies to waiting mothers and kneeling lovers.” She sang and by dawn’s break , all saints day, she extended her arthritic fingers and stroked the cooing, suspiring baby with tender affection and love. The thanksgiving grace of god had touched the soul of a sleepy inhalation and the wish of a solitary dream as the trick became the gift of life.

In Sackcloth

Ron Koppelberger

In Sackcloth

The headlong pursuit of celebrated, even admired, fruits in ferment, lingered in the vapory mists. The bedlam measured equal portions of sorrow and misery in her cauldron of cause. “Sweets for the Sweetie.” she chuckled to herself. The laborers had diligently fenced in the property of her neighboring lot. She had never talked to or even seen her neighbor, nevertheless she whispered, “sweets for the sweatie.”
After two days labor the fence was nearly complete and the dark skinned laborers remained unscathed as they talked, joked and dug post holes. She thrust the jape jawbone dust and rooster scrap into the charcoal colored pot. “Sweets for the sweetie.” she hummed.
On the third day one of the laborers knocked on her door. In a pallor of panic she answered the door, a great thunder and roaring like the screams of an injured tiger betrayed the timid knocking sound. Running to the smudged begrimed window glass, she starred at her neighbors property in horror. A giant plume of darkness stretched from the ground to the sky blotting out the sun and swallowing up the workers. The giant cloud moved in her direction and she mumbled a curse, acknowledging her error. Maybe it had been the rooster bones she thought as the tempest devoured her.

The Suns Warmth (surreal)

Looking through the fence (Surreal)

The Three Maidens (Surreal