flickr: Berno’s Poem

As you know with poems, it takes awhile to decipher the one true meaning, and sometimes, it doesn’t even have one meaning, but many. It was early, early morning when we went to the armory to get our weapons to depart to our Iraq deployment. I had a notebook that Hiromi had bought me and I was going to write important information into it and stuff. My friend Berno took it for a sec and gave it back. I didn’t know what he had wrote until I got back from Iraq and was in my room unpacking. If you can’t read it, it says…

The Morning was long with the smell of fear. As the sun beats down on our shaded minds our journey though time begins!

I know if I had read it then it would have had a different meaning then it would if I read it now. Iraq takes that kind of toll on you. Now, I read it and I will give my meaning to it. Of course you could throw a meaning out there too but it would be kind of difficult because you weren’t there with us when he wrote it, but I’m sure you can alter it to your own experiences.

The first line, “The Morning was long with the smell of fear.” I ain’t sure if he had to cap Morning, but it makes me wonder. It could mean that THIS morning was it you know, the time we are setting and remembering forever and the truth is, I’ll never forget that morning, so I guess to us, it is the Morning. Now, it was long with the smell of fear. Long as in it was early in the morning and the wait was going to be awhile, but the smell of fear…so true. We didn’t know what was ahead of us. They are vague with information due to operational security risk. We just get the bare bones of the big picture. I know I was scared. It was the Morning that I wasn’t going to see Hiromi for 10 months. That scared me. Alot.

As the sun beats down on our shaded minds… Hmm…? He must have wrote it when the sun got up so we must have been waiting for at least 2 hours then he grabbed it. I see…so it was long. Shaded minds. Shaded from what? Are we drones molded to perform tasked ordered by our higher? Or are we real people with our own minds but put into a situation where we are made to think one way and aren’t afforded the other way. ( Actully, someone told me about the three minds we have as Marines, our gut, our real mind, and our Marine mind - but thats a different post ) I have to say that he meant shaded as in we are in the shadow of something greater then us. Going to perform a task that to us doesn’t seem like a big deal, but its just another part of the big picture. Wow, this line is hard. Next line please!

I like this line! Our journey through time begins. You know what they tell us, when you leave to Iraq the world doesn’t stop, but speeds up just because you ain’t there. For us, Iraq isn’t the Earth we know. Its different. Its a new place that we wouldn’t ever visit or go to unless we had to. A place we don’t want to stay at. We feel like its a different planet and our world, Earth is spinning twice as fast since ‘we’ are not there. When I came back, so much had happened. I was amazed at the things I was soaking in from family and friends. People moved, graduated, were born, died, married, grew up. I missed it all. Birthdays, holidays, get-to-gethers, parties…everything. Gone. I won’t ever be able to go back to time to see the little brother I left, the friends I had, the birthdays I wanted to really celebrate with love ones. Man…this is depressing. But yea, I really felt that is what he meant. Our journey. Though time. I’m glad it ended. I’m tired of traveling through time.

What do ya’ll think?