Drink

[Magpie]

This felt more like just a life observation than a poem as such.
i feel that it needs a bit of a leg up in terms of offering a poetic device or two...but i do get the image and the frustrationof a wasted life in here.

Not that this is nessasarily what you wanted to capture or is much of an improvment (because I've cheated and used a cliche)
but I've added a couple of effects: the bounce in the last line and the interaction between bottle and breath.
Appoligies for taking the liberty of doing this but sometimes i find it difficult to explain what I mean.

A killer's breath
bottled up-
A lifetime down the drain.

That's great as a poem, but I was writing a haiku.

Hi, I know exactly where you are coming from because I myself used to be strict about 17 syllables in the 5-7-5 structure, but because of differences in the mechanics of the Japanese and English language it is probably the least important aspect of writing a haiku. It is probably better to go for efficiency and say as much as possible with as few words as possible. Although it took me a long time to agree with all the people that were telling me this.
Hope this is of some help,
Mark