Haiku to kill time

I leave for Baltimore in about 2 hours. I don't want to go. I never really want to go when the military ships me off. Not since I spent a year in Iraq. I was in bed up until a few minutes ago, drifting between thoughts of my friends and the dread of spending two weeks on active duty. I can never sleep before I get sent anywhere anymore. Wished I could.....but at least it's not the desert again right? It's funny, while I was over in a little town near Nasiryah, in Southern Iraq, one of the locals gave me a book of Japanese Haiku poetry translated in English. (I know....An Iraqi guy gives an American guy a book of Japanese poems....Weird stuff happens to me.) For those of you not familiar with Haiku, they are three line poems that follow a pattern of syllables. First line-5...Second line-7...Third line-5. I fell in love with the poems, and read the book cover-to-cover at least twenty times. After a while I started to formulate my own poems in my head, and I jotted at least a hundred of them down while I was there. It became my time killer. I would write about any and everything. I haven't pulled them out in over a year, but something told me just now that it is time to pull them out and share a few. Here are a few of my favorites.

Family Members:

You brought me to life
Your love is my character
I exist as you.

Loving Grandmother
The Great Creator hails you
Guest of all honor.

Gentle Matriarch
Angels will sing your praises
Love is your power.

If not my brother
but a tree, he would have a
hard bark and deep roots.

I, in awe of you
You are a bed-rock of strength
No one works harder.

My mother, selfless
The bible talks about her
Proverbs thirty-one.


Love:

I miss you so much
Sorrow moistens my eyelash
I need you to live.

Paradise to me
My time with you will be long
My time away, short.

Happiness a cloth
Your sweet love a fine fabric
Drape me in them please.


War and The Enemy:

Evil, Death, your way
I have seen what you can do
Your power to kill.

You psychopath bitch
Satan creates your cancer
When will the cure come?

Wait, listen, don't move,
The explosion closer now
Fear envelops me.

A saline trail left
Sad memories and that trail,
All that I have now.

The clock, my warden
Making sure I can't escape
Watch me-blink-I'm gone.

The world needs a flag
Something we can all support
Brothers and Sisters.

The image haunts me
Italian prayer mixed with blood
No one deserved this.

His legs are missing
As I carry him he prays
He is very light.

(I don't like some of those, and I left out a lot of them....but they help to paint a picture)


God and Religion:

He knows the number
Of hairs on my head, He knows.
My breath is his will.

Lucifer watches
While you act with abandon
Apolyon waits.

Author of all life,
A short murder mystery,
Please do not write me.

Our Father loves us
In his eyes we are perfect
You question his sight?


Random:

Faithful friend of man
We, created in image
You, in character.

The real flower fades,
Flowers in paintings and books
will last for all time.

The cricket's soft song
Signals night time's arrival.
We will be safe here.


I hope the next two-weeks are wonderful for you all. Only an hour now until I leave for Baltimore. Wow...these poems are still helping me kill time...funny.