Thoughts in the middle watch

The devil's in the wind tonight,
hell is in my mind;
demons of the grief I gave
the girl I left behind.

For once,
just once,
in the grinding port of aching toil and din
I paid to weep my pain in a woman's
gentle arms, and didn't think it sin.

But God...!
Dear God...!
Why did you hide your virus
in those mother-loving charms?

Now the girl who once adored me
lies gaunt upon the sheet –
stricken by my loving –
with lips that once were sweet
drawn back upon her teeth.

A thousand miles away,
my lovely waits for death;
and a bitter prayer she murmurs
with every ebbing breath;
and the bitter prayer she murmurs,
soulful eyes repeat;
“I'll curse you out of heaven
if our paths should ever meet.”

Charlie Gregory
at sea

Samaritan days.
This kid called me every shift for four years
then disappeared off the radar.

Anorexic Girl

Sometimes she whispers in my ear,
a tapestry of pain and fear
whose warp and weft weave haunted days
and nightmare dreams, through woeful sobs
and blooded screams; till phantoms from
a private hell enshroud me in
a chilling spell.

                       I’m on a tour
within her mind, where those outside
are breaking in and every thought
accuses sin in saddest voice
man ever heard.

                         Midst grief, defying
spoken word, she can only run
and hide, cringe ever deeper down
inside, avoiding some imagined
threat from friend... or foe she’s never
met.

I know more of her than of
my own, my wasted waif who walks
alone. I want to ride inside
her head and sweep it clean of all
its dread, but will not know her when
we meet; walk past her, crying in
the street.

                 But, till she finds the strength
to lay the horrors of the past
and scream, “I’m me! I’m running free!”
There’ll be no woman sweet asleep,
but just the child who I hear weep.

Charlie Gregory