"stringer" poems
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
Aug 30, 2014
Aug 30, 2014 at 7:12 PM UTC
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.
Sep 21, 2019
Sep 21, 2019 at 8:33 PM UTC
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
Feb 23, 2016
Feb 23, 2016 at 9:34 AM UTC
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
Dec 17, 2011
Dec 17, 2011 at 11:10 AM UTC
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
Nov 24, 2017
Nov 24, 2017 at 7:12 AM UTC
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
Aug 27, 2010
Aug 27, 2010 at 6:50 AM UTC
If Trump is elected President I'm going to get up at six and feed the hens , plant a row of okra come Springtime and grease the tractor that same evening .. Should it be Sanders I'll build cages for Big Boys , go to the lake for a stringer of bluegills and walk barefooted the whole time I'm doing it .. In case it's Clinton I'll be plowing from morning to Noon , stopping for a few figs and a cherry tomato or two ...
If it's Cruz you'll find me picking the blues on a brown guitar , eating Spanish olives like their going out of style , shoring up chicken wire to fend off 'critters' , nipping on Wild Turkey to ease my blisters ....
Feb 25, 2016
Feb 25, 2016 at 9:35 PM UTC
My heart beats to the rhythm,
It dances like a butterfly,
In tge glimmering glory of His love
Which flows like a waterfall from above
Oceans way from home,
My destination lost in the hazy horizons,
Engulfed in loneliness I still find peace,
My mountain of hope and belief still stands
The beat of His love makes my heart dance
A song of hope even in blues
I feel revivified like drenched leaves
After a midsummer rain
And I forget all the pain
I soar and dive like ocean tides
In the golden sunrise
When He commands dark storms to be still
Nothing can bring me down
To His name only I bow
He's the stringer of this song called life
The pianist who makes my heart to dance
Aug 8, 2016
Aug 8, 2016 at 1:44 PM UTC
A Hung parliament sounds ideal,
shoutout for carpenters and ropemakers.
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 12:30 PM UTC
I'm stronger than twisted mother ***** who have no clear idea who they want to be.
What limits do I should show. My evil side of me has a mind of its own.
My anger turns your vision into blindness.
My evil side has no heart only twisted lies scars wounds that never singe.
My evil side plays games like a oijia board gone horribly wrong.
Your ideas become twisted games turning dangerous with no way to turn back and run.
My evil side is stronger when you manipulate break take every thing of me. My evil side feeds on your misfortunes it feeds off your own stupidity it feeds on all your horrible remarks insults lies. My evil side only grows stringer from your twisted bul **** and your stupidest ucks
Jun 8, 2017
Jun 8, 2017 at 10:24 PM UTC
I will be caught
in the end
and chastised
if I write
to be recognised
for in that guise
a victim I will fall
to silly pride
a simple stringer
of words and thoughts
through the tumble
of life
a scribbler
a dabbler
a story-teller
on the insignificant side
let the real bards sing
I'll listen in deference
in humility abide
for a small voice
am I
that truth
I shouldn't deny
Jan 8, 2021
Jan 8, 2021 at 7:14 PM UTC
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.
Oct 31, 2017
Oct 31, 2017 at 4:29 PM UTC