Dear reader
Ron is a poet, a short story writer and an artist. He has written 102 books of poetry over the past several years and 18 novels: He has been submitting his work for the past two and a half years. He is thrilled by acceptance. He is always looking for an audience. He has published 639 poems, 573 short stories and 115 pieces of art in over 204 periodicals, books, anthologies and 8 radio Broadcasts. He has been accepted in England, Australia, Canada, Japan and Thailand. He loves to write and offer an experience to the reader. He is a member of The American Poet’s Society as well as The Isles Poetry Association and The Dark Fiction Guild. His art is viewable on Facebook under will806095@bellsouth.net, you just click on profile and look under photo albums. He hopes you enjoy His work.

Website- Ronnie.Weebly.com (Swamplit)
Website- Shadowsatnighttide.weebly.com
Website- WolfFray.blogspot.com
Website- RavensWont.blogspot.com
Website- E-zine Ethrealsouls.blogspot.com
Website- E-zine Fathermostdream.blogspot.com
Website- Mirageinblame.blogspot.com
Sincerely Yours




Ron Koppelberger

4192 Acorn Ave.

Bunnell, Fl. 32110

Ph: 386-4379118

About 600 Words

Wolves and the Brutal Chill

The failure of his agreement to cross the frozen foothills of the mountain pass, the damn Donner freeway, was a charge to the series of mishaps that had led him to this point. He controlled the urge to cough and failed as he sprayed a fine mist of crimson across the frozen snow.
He had exactly two swallows of Gatorade left in the green and orange labeled bottle. The twittery helplessness he was feeling enslaved him to the need for forward momentum, he had to move, to push on to the meeting point. His injury was severe and the stitch in his side ached like a demon, push, push, push, he thought. His feet were frostbitten and numb from the cold, push, push, push. The delicate trace of blood smeared across his check as he wiped his mouth. He had spotted a shadow in the pine groove that lay before him, a wolf, jet black and a flash of crimson pupils in the light.
The tree had been a challenge to climb. He was about twenty feet up the tree clinging in a bear hug when the world went ashen gray.
The wolf howled on the distant horizon and ran North toward the rise in the landscape. Pine sap soaked his leather gloves in spots smelling fresh and bitter. He had moved, faltering for just an instant. The open space beneath him yawned and his feet slid against the crumbling bark as he fell, pin wheeling to the frozen earth. His friends, Ruff Winston’s, words rang in his ears , “Man carry a Bowie brother, a Bowie is the perfect mate fer yer trip, a Bowie man!” The empty void where the knifes sheath should have been was a godless balance of stupidity and naiveté’; he carried Jim’s namesake in his right breast and as a result he had done two things to himself when he fell.
He had impaled himself on the edge of the blade and he had sliced off his right nipple. The tiny chunk of flesh lay loose in his shirt, a tiny reminder somewhere close to his belly button, maybe he had thought, they can sew it back on. The taunt sheen of blood had dried sticky and matted against his chest. He wasn’t bleeding, nevertheless he was coughing up blood, he knew the knife had pierced his right lung.
His breathing was labored and bubbly sounding. He lay a short distance away from the tree in an exhausted heap. The sky swam and the sun burned his eyes with a salty stinging insistence. In gentle sloping degrees he fell unconscious dreaming of jet black fur and warm coddling wolf mothers. He lay there for two days before they found him. He was near deaths door and the shelter the mysterious wolf had provided him with had gone unnoticed by his rescuers.
When he awoke the bandages on his hands prevented him from scratching his face , raw, red, sunburned and chapped from the cold. The attending doctor defined the single set of teeth marks on his wrist as a mauling, an attack by wild dogs.
He had a coppery taste in his mouth as he attempted to itch the place where his nipple had been. “Damn!” he whispered in a growling hoarse gasp. The television was on and a commercial for Petco Cat Food was playing; a gentle purring feline appeared for a moment and his eyes bulged as an uncontrollable howl erupted from his mouth.


Automatic Outlaw

The wreck resisted the urge to beg a pittance from the passion of black boots and tight leather audacity. She followed the lines on his face with a remembrance of declared bond. The wreck coughed and furrowed his forgiving brow. She had assumed the guise of a recollection, a homeward movement in sashay and tempest, he remembered the dither of do’s and don’ts , of want and aspiration; they had been one.
He fingered the tiny totem that the stranger had offered him so long ago, the automatic outlaw, the electric passport to better times and pregnant futures. He saw flames and passion, he smelled the roasted scent of crackling wheat and tender harvest. The totem glowed and became warm in his hand. She watched the wreck and puzzled the common anchor that had brought them to destinations in scarlet saddle. She surveyed the wreck and seized the moment.
He was destitute and yet he was real and here, in her trespass. The fire burned in her eyes and she adjusted her Stetson. Found by fate, the black Nova supreme belched exhaust as she gathered him in her arms. He smelled Jasmine and she smoke. They climbed into the waiting car and headed North, toward saffron fields and azure skies, toward destiny.
He smiled and massaged the totem; thank god he whispered.


Exhaling in Secret Prisons

The floor was dank, mossy and covered with the pitted scars of a thousand before. The walls were granite and rough hewn concrete on all four sides. The ceiling was smoked glass with recessed lighting deep within the heavy glass , just barely discernable and glowing in shaded spectrums of candent nuance.
He touched his raw stubble covered cheeks with the tips of his fingers. “Breath Star, Breath!” he whispered aloud. His heavy exhalations filled the room and he wondered how much air he had left in the claustrophobic confines of the prison; how many inhalations and gasping breaths. The red button on the wall in front of him was the tempter, the will to move ahead. What might happen if he pushed the scarlet button? Perhaps he would find freedom, perhaps a thousand hells, perhaps great grinning deaths in blackened ash and maybe the edge of heaven. Might the walls close in on him smashing him to a pulpy memory.
Wellsprings of water flooding his prison with thirsty swallows of death, what might, what will? Star touched his finger to his lips , “Shhhhhhhhhhh,” he hissed, “Tell me your secret, tell me your secret.” Star grinned “Yer my turn little red……..yer my turn.” he stepped closer to the red button. “Pease god……please!” he prayed.
Star touched the button, smooth and warm, “Push it Star, push it! He shouted at the wall. “PUSH IT!” Star pushed the button and a warm breeze wafted from behind the brick and stone as it slid sideways; there was a tunnel and light, the smell of wheat, saffron assurance near the light, near the light, near the………..
Star opened his eyes and the blurry image of his raven haired wife met him.
“Thank God!” she gasped, “He’s awake, Star’s awake!”
He remembered the car careening into the ditch then blackness. He starred into the fluorescent lights overhead and sighed in relief; the button, he was free, alive in love, in fields of wheat and saffron.


A Blessed Blossom

The naturalness of the gentle blossom was in fine-spun magic with the seasons of both ash and harvest. A bloom in blushing chagrin with the accounts of angels and saints, full in sleep and boundaries of frayed glory. There was a perplexing innocence in the beginnings of reflection and birth, bearth and gusty meandering sanctity.
It came in sad sorrow of shadow and shade, a departure from love and animate intimacy. It was a cold proposition in favor of demons and blackened berserkers, the season in rebuke, the time of parched acquiescence and discreet dark diversion. It was the bane of passerby, the wane desire of soliloquies in bone dust, rattle and gossiping devils.
The flower cringed and withered in lieu of passion and sated cycles and in the miracle that defines the amaranth it found purchase in a new day as the specter of loves lost and declared diabolic dissolved into the soils of perdition, passing without further fanfare. A bloom in crowns of possession, a soul in search of harvest hearth, the amaranth of dark confessions.


The Next Day

He was wide awake and beautifully ever again. He had delivered a fulfilling, rolled, milled, sated and assured glass of whiskey wild, wild in alliance to the dreams of slightly sober care, precious bond between yesterday’s twilight and dawn’s replete secret.
He had sat on the front porch rocker the previous evening, comfort and a frosted mug of whiskey in perfect taste with the shadows of the coming darkness. The world had rolled on and the fact called life had made itself known in reflection and muse. He was swaying, gentle savor and the sip of a new beginning. The orange twilight horizon and fresh appreciations of cool indigo evenings in awe filled his eyes with the expectation of a day to come.
The cars dusted the air as the rattled and bumped along the dusty dirt road in front of the house. He could taste the grit as he sipped the cool whiskey, he endured the will of what comes to pass with comfort, with ease, with complacent degrees of sameness.
The whiskey had made a hollow little tempest against the side of the glass as he turned it between his fingers. The frayed edge of evening-tide cloaks and gentle waves of starlight lit the skies in flittering butterfly momentum.
He had raged the afternoon and in raw boned delight, in wonders of toil; the seed in saffron and wheat, in gilded turns of earth and sweet buds of birth he had toiled and turned the soil with sweat and dreams of tomorrow, sunburned and sure, dirty flannel and gray stained blue jeans. In secret touch the half moons of fertile fresh earth between his fingernails felt good and real.
The whiskey had been good. Yesterday he had sewn and the birth of a new day, a fresh crop defined the currents of what would be a courtesy in dawn’s eternal bonnet, the advance of tomorrows morning sunshine spirit.

Ron Koppelberger