Hair and Outrage

Hidden by trees and questions of silhouette, the beauty remaining flaxen and fascinating in silky vision, sinned, raging by the repute of an outcry, by the wonder of a passport in remedy for all the ails of rage. She forced his appetite for perfect ceremony. She reached, finished and combed the corn silk before her expectant smile, the grin of a makeshift wish.
She gently lulled the seemly endurance of truth for the angel of supposed caste, in bond without the fallen shine of success, of excellent division, between day and night, love and anger, she thoroughly constrained and sensed the renown of a deceitful rage, careless, reflected by the demon in her view. She traced the shape of her need and prayers. He hovered and dribbled in black seas of lichen and moss, in the dark alleys of woe and desire beyond the wont of mortal men, and the hate he tended in great gardens of blossoming tears was full in bloom and nurtured angry rebuke. The whispers of a conquering demon and the lies of a thousand nightmares unbidden. She found faith in the reason for her existence in the houses sent forth by the undoing of his fear.


Breathing Fire

Enlivened by the promise of payment in flames of favor, welcomed by magic’s untold and dreams of ecstasy, he ruled the perch, the straw and the sordid grip upon the secret of fire. Boss Mean approached the eternal source of warfare, of battle and fighting bond with an easy awareness. Pepper and tickets permitted he thought, to hold the balance of forever in spiced embers of time, in enemy eyes and war, scarlet battles for the red flames of perdition.
The tiny flame guttered and ebbed, flowed and elongated in rhythm to the desire of its master. “ By the Gods I’ll have my turn at chance, by the fires of hell itself.” he exclaimed to the flittering shadows and the small blaze of candent existence. A small ember, a spark of fire lit the air above the flame and in its place a tiny ebony moth appeared, flittering, evanescent and erratically circling. Boss reached out and touched the space where the moth revolved. Opening his hand he grabbed the tiny shadow. It was a warm flame in his palm and it beat its wings furiously, tickling his hand. “ Sweet lords of soul shine, by the wayfarer winds of swords and precious battle lines, give me your victorious bond, your will unto the possessor of fire and victory.” he yelled to the ceiling. Smokey disarrays of mist collected near the ceiling as the room filled with smoke, the smoke of ceaseless wars and conquests unbidden. Boss whispered, “ By the Gods of reception and the revolution in tongues of rapture, by the flames of province, by the gods.” His breath disturbed the flame and the tiny brilliance of a hundred year war.
Boss counted the blessings of fire, of war, of remitted peace. Engraved in the lines between youth and ancient rest, lay the face of a consuming treaty, in want of fervid passion, in his countenance the fond flow of anger and desire, desire for the shade of conquest dealt by the fires of what owns majestic histories in won wrath and promised rule. He relished the flame, his lips parched and cracked as the sooty smoke drifted if wave of ambient gray. The tiding of conflict, “ Moth, betray not my need for victory.” he chanted in singsong rhythm to the wavering flame, the small mirage of searing advance.
Later, he would sing to the silhouette of fire and war, in unswerving passions of commanded power; in the end, in all and all he would covet the seed and feed the raven with a single rose as the advent of war sought its possessor and charge.

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.

Punishing the Drum

Skewed by harps, lutes and endless trembling masquerades in cat gut, the tight lipped celebrity of the veiled drummer exalted the environs of unholy phenomenon. He occupied the greater of anger, in part at the midway point between hate and panoramas of blood. He found the fine art of drumming embryonic ally Mephistophelean, a bearing bought in backward glances to the piano and flutist, a poetic wrath in irritating repetition.
“Neat slaves of vacant feather, play by the call
Of common meals and waspish swarm, play by neat
Bombastic, blackened desires of rage.” he screamed over the cacophony of sound. In replete doom they listened to the call of the drummer, intent with the posture of believing rapiers and sharp wardship.
Tiny by the spells of heaven, an angel cried and the eagle of issued breath, of conquering trust, found changeable seconds in reprieve for the flute, the piano, the lute and the harp; the drummer found a strange solstice in this and paragons of respite, in the flitter of a reason for being.

Ron Koppel Berger