if you're lost without               direction
i will be one of maybe             just a few        
i can be    your  own                compass                  
let me        encompass          you, when
direction       is unknown       my arms
are a                 place to                move,
come                    in enjoy the warmth
for i                           will always face
north                            straight true
                          
when your life is all recessions
and really all  depressions  too
let me be
your
compass
let me come encompass you
your Longitude and Latitude are
all thrown
in a muck
let me get you to a place,
where you wont feel so stuck


               The tropic of cancer
       Is not a place for one to linger
  if you need to             grab my hand
hold on like i'm               your stringer
   when you cant                
       gasp another
           breathe and    
               there   isn't
                   anything
                       you  can do
come, and          let me be your    
compass,                let me come  
  and                        encompass you
   every sigh                  you relieve      
     will help                    find you on
          the map,                 and every
             time you             squeeze
                my hands, will help
                      you to relax
                      

this world is                     full of                     problems, one
thing that im                for sure, so                lets forget all
  the complacent           and replace               them with
    something               more,      wipe           away your
       tears you              wont         need        them where  
          we are          going.             if your    lost ill be
           your paddles                         we can find the
            way together                          and just like
              a little                                   compass ill
              be here                                     forever

The man to my right was more than eight feet away. I was going to have to move closer to him to catch my limit of four trout. I halved the distance between the two of us and noted the sideways glance he shot me. I apologized immediately and asked if I was crowding him.
     “No, you fine,” he replied within a thick Serbian accent.
     “You’re with them?” I asked, pointing to the crowd of people on the bridge some 30 feet upstream from us. I had heard the crowd of eastern Europeans talking earlier, and their accents were unmistakable to me. He nodded and we continued fishing.
     With my new angle I was better able to pick my fish in the water, so that’s what I did. I spied one and tossed my jig toward him. It took five casts but eventually, he took the bait. As I netted it in the swift, ice-cold spring water the man beside me congratulated me on the catch. I thanked him and added it to my stringer. This made three, and I only needed one more.
     “What’s your name?” I asked him.
     “Ivan”.
     “Have you been in the states long?” I asked, after the pause following his short reply seemed to invite more questions.
     “Since ‘96, my family live here. It is good.”
     “You like living here?” I wondered aloud.
     “Yes, the fishing is good. It is like back home in Serbia, or in Germany. We have this fishing there.”
     “You mean trout?”
     “Yes, trout...and some other fish like these, in water like this, but I can’t go home now.” He looked away momentarily. His lips pursed, and his brow furrowed. I pulled my line in, wanting to ask him more and not wanting to be distracted.
     “Were you in the war?”
     “Yes, I was in the Serbian police force.” My heart pounded. “When I was in the Serbian police force, we did what you see on the news. We went into villages and we killed them. We killed them all.”
     I cast my line back into the water, spying another trout. Ivan shrugged and cast his own line. I couldn’t tell what he was using but it looked like cheese of some kind. “I was drafted in Serb police when I was 15. I had no choice. If I refuse, they **** me. I did what I had to do.” I nodded, and ****** my line, missing a fish. “Before the war, I fished. After the war, there were not so many people, so fishing was very good.”
     The air around me was alive. The trees were greener, the water was colder and clearer, the sun was brighter, and the sky was bluer.
     “I’ve been fishing for a long time as well,” I responded. My father used to bring me here as a child. He nodded and continued.
     “After the war, all the fish come back, no one fished during the war, so there were many of them. You just had to be careful of the mines.” He grunted and gazed skyward.
     “The mines?”
     “Yes, during the war they mined the water.”
     I watched trout number four take my jig and I carefully reeled him in. Ivan congratulated me a second time, and I thanked him in return.
“You’re a good fisherman,” he said turning back to his own pursuit of the four-trout limit, as I left the water to clean my catch.

When we first met
They said you were a *****
And I didn't believe them
You seemed intelligent
(Well, intelligent enough)

The days of silence between us
Grew to weeks and months
I was almost done
Chewing on thoughts of you

How pathetic of me (Why?)
Because you're a ****
Truly a disgrace to your gender
A waste of my time

A smile meets my face
When I know
You'll wake crusted over
With a man who couldn't care less for you

A Hung parliament sounds ideal,
shoutout for carpenters and ropemakers.

I want to see lady to ladette
set in Baltimore
with Omar teaching drug theft
with the finer points of gun cleaning
calibre selection and event planning
as his curricula.

I want Jimmy and Bunk
teaching the dos and don’ts
of alcohol intoxication
the art of shot and stubbie mix
the singing and drinking anthems
to stir the blood
and the strategic gutter chuck
before the final whisky chaser.

I want those girls out on the corners
playing police bingo
speaking drug lingo
and developing their drug-fuelled irony
of WMB, the Icicle and Pandemic.

I want Clay to teach them elocution
and elongation in the word “Shiiiiiiit”

I want Avon Barnsdale to teach them gangster codes
of respect on Sundays for stoop people
and Sunday crowns
on everybody’s grandmother.

I want Kima to discuss sexuality
and the Other
I want them to talk change and reform
with Cutty, Colvin and Prez.
Daniels will show how love and loyalty
can be made to work in reality.

And I just want
I only want
Stringer
for myself.

© M.L.Emmett

Whats wrong with your matter
why do your thoughts seem to shatter
and splatter all silence into waves
of static chatter
Let your mind faulter
sitting silent under the calm water
Bubbled constant blabber jabber of
topics and thoughts and things that really dont matter
Fill the days with more than one hour
of silent inner and being stiller
giving power to the brain flower
Ignore the distractor the interactor
and the teacher thats molding young minds
with some kind of ego attractor
use brain conditioner applyed twice a day
by a liscensed practitoner
asleep at the wheeler
thoughts that act as some kind of leader
attracted by a stringer
unaware of the silent danger
mind of alter hidden
right above the shoulder

The wind growls at me
and I scowl back,
*** for tat.

This and that's okay if it
helps you make it
anyway that's this boy's
view
but you
must make your own way
and every day you'll own.

Never been down to
'Red River Valley'
but it sounds a real
homely place.

You'll have to stop me when
I wander to far from the pen
and poem,
bad habits are good at times
but hard to break.

This and that's what'll take me
to the corners where conspiracy
is fused into the stones.

The wind'll growl and
I'll still scowl
nothing ever changes.

There are more than enough
on not enough
and more than enough
on too much,
when enough is as good as a feast
the least they could do is to share.

Q:
What's green and gets you drunk?
A:
your Giro,

the old joke spoke volumes.

We might as well be unemployed
we could enjoy it more,
at best we'd find the food we need
down at the mission store

Its funny how I can be dead in the brain
Only four hours sleep but still slaying stupid games
The people expect trust when its all turned to rust
Faulty; and your fault for letting it settle in the dust

Like hold up, wait a minute, you ******* me over
That logic you used there; are you certain you're sober?
Don't you dare try to pin your **** onto me
Just because I wont take a drink from a stagnant creek

I didn't come down in yesterdays rain
I know the difference between real and fake
I know when you're brewing an earthquake
I know enough to start making a change

I have the experience of a thousand words
Hidden behind bust lips, sounds left unheard
Vocal chords not humming, no six stringer strumming,
And buzzing like my phone does when lips start running

You could make a change too, stop and think
This relation is parched and needs new drinks
You've brought it all down, suffered in a drought,
Concocted some confusion and forged brand new doubts

I won't buy false gold no more, I'm no fool
Imma fix it up, but I need my tools
Stop acting like one too, start being a solution
You want me back? Well stop toying with my trust for your amusement

One windless evening the bass started biting
just before sunset as I glided along
the bayou in a pirogue with a ******
of the paddle here and there for direction.

I was casting a topwater up against
the bank among the cypress trunks and stumps
and overhanging limbs and shrubs and twitching
and popping the bait until the fish struck.

To see and hear and feel the violent burst
of each strike and to set the hook firmly
in each jaw and each battle kept me out
until the mosquitoes and the gator came.

At first a bumpy head at least a foot wide
and three feet long with big shiny black eyes
inched toward the pirogue and me as if we
were just what he had in mind for dinner.

I dropped my rod and thought I’d better paddle
fast and hard before Wally got too close
but Wally sensed panic and to my horror
I saw the swish of his tail fifteen feet back.

The gator accelerated smooth and quick
and locked its gaze upon the very spot
the paddle broke water to push me away
as the jaws snapped shut and cracked it in half.

I slid away watching as the gator shook
its monstrous head free of the broken splinter
and I realized now he’d be coming again
for me down the bayou with half a paddle.

The pirogue rocked on the wave Wally made
during all the commotion and sure enough
he came again stalking the little boat
now stalled and adrift so I had to act fast.

I untied and lifted my stringer of bass
gasping and wet like a shiny green fleece
and hefted and hurled it aiming precisely
at the slashing jaws of the reptile beast.

The gator struck at the fish with a splash
of his big toothy head and chomped down on three
huge bass and swallowed them whole in one gulp
then snapped up three more that were still on the string.

So Wally was happy for now as the sun
went down and I wondered how to get back
to the dock half a mile away in the dark
with Wally nearby and perhaps hungry yet.

Then I got an idea and picked up my rod
and cast the old topwater past Wally’s head
and chugged it back popping in front of his face
where soon he attacked it and hooked himself good.

Wally went down with a **** and a swirl
and made such a wave I grabbed the boat rail
with one hand while holding onto the rod
which bent almost double as the line stretched tight.

The pirogue took off like a rocket boat
as Wally swam up the bayou to flee
the pressure and drag and the alien hook
underwater and then on top with me.

In no time I neared the dock in the dark
and slackened the line until Wally shook free
then glided right up to the dock and *******
and got out fishless but at least in one piece.