Michelle: Favorites

May 2014 Michelle

One Click

May 2014 Michelle

AD Sifford

One click was all it took
And I was hooked
Once glance, yeah just one look
And my faith was shook
One sin, my world caved in
Flooding in with water to my chin
And I still can't believe it all came down
With one click

And the devil said to me,
"Boy, you belong to me
And you'll never be free
Your heart is bound to me with

One click" was all it took
And I was hooked
Once glance, yeah just one look
And my faith was shook
One sin, my world caved in
Flooding in with water to my chin
And I still can't believe it all came down
With one click

Now God I'm on my knees
For the millionth time I plead
Do not abandon me
Pour your light down on me

One man is what it took
It's in your book
A lamb who had not sinned
One cross, his blood was lost
But you raised Him up again
One hope is all I have
And I am glad
That You are the God You are
Because I know that by your strength I'll overcome
That once click

|Written 2011|

I thought of myself as a "good" Christian boy. I'd loved God my whole life. Never let a cuss word come to my lips, opposed every kind of evil, and loved for good to triumph in all things. I wanted God's way--his Will to be done.
It all came down with one click of the mouse. MY sense of innocence--along with my misplaced pride--was broken. Instantly I was ensnared by a new beast I never knew or could have imagined lived within me. I became addicted to *******, a slave to all available forms of lust. I was a sinner, fully realized. I tasted death and slept with it. And some point after that breaking point, I finally truly understood the Love of the God who yet pursued me, and offered me freedom, grace, and forgiveness. It was then I learned his love. Then I began to be truly humbled. Then I learned to love others. And then that I realized just what Christ has truly done for me--for you...for us all.
He taught me how to take hold of the freedom from sin, the freedom that He purchased for us by taking our place on the cross. The cross, where horizontal met vertical, heaven met earth, righteousness and sin, God and man collided.

Though scars remain, as do struggles, and temptations, and weakness, healing and growth, maturity and refining do come through Him.

I was freed from a daily, 2+ year addiction, about 3 years ago. Do I still slip up? Yes. Am I perfect? Not even close. But God reminds me of my dependence on Him, shows me his faithfulness through me, grants me more strength as I grow into it and learn, and I become better, slowly, all the time. There are slips and backslides, but where I lose footing once, God brings me a greater number steps forward.
Maturity is a slow thing. Faithfulness is formed through years of fire. But it all works for the better in the end.

And through my experiences, addiction, depression, brokenness, shame, and hopelessness, this heart in me has formed in new ways; I can relate to you, know your struggle, walk you with me back through the processes that bettered me, and healed me, and allowed me to know freedom. I can show you why I have hope, and that God has always been faithful, and how He has. I have love for my enemies, and have compassion for the worst, the most lost, of sinners. I am a sinner. But a righteous God knows me. He loves us. All of us. And He grace for every one. We're his children. Nothing can ever change that. Literally, nothing can. He will always forgive the repentance in the heart of one of his broken children, and He understands our weakness better than we even do. And He even felt it as a man, and knows it as God. Trust Him. And He will give you a better life. The one He made you for.

God bless.

- ADSciple // A.D. Sifford, [May 22, 2014; 18:24]

I've done some songwork with One Click. All that's finished at this time is the vocal melody.

© 2017 A.D. Sifford.
I'm okay with you sharing my poems, but I ask that you show courtesy. Please be honest about the authorship by attributing it to my name. Thank you,
- Sifford

#love #sin #peace #freedom #addiction #god #religion #lust #society #salvation

May 2014 Michelle

The End of Faery

May 2014 Michelle

David Lewis Paget

The End of Faery

Garth lay still in the gilded cage
Unable to move a thing,
The bars were merely spiders’ webs
Of a faery’s magicking.
He’d wandered into the Faery Ring
Where he’d seen the mushrooms spread,
And now was caught in a faery spell
With the rest of the living dead.

With Tom, the Candlestick Maker’s son
And a barrel of candlewax,
He’d dawdled home from the marketplace
And lay in the beckoning grass.
He woke to find he was tightly bound
With a faery up on his chest,
She said, ‘Lock him in the cage as well,
Along with all of the rest.’

And Madge, the maid with a milking pail
Who was sent to milk the cow,
She’d wandered off on her way; she thought,
She needed to feed the sow.
She woke to mushrooms, ten feet tall
All towering over her head,
The stalks were bars, set under the stars
And her limbs, they felt like lead.

While Tim the Tinker was there as well
With his knives and sharpening tools,
His grindstone lay in a pile of hay
And the bonds on him were cruel.
The beggar lay in his filthy rags
While the rich man muttered, ‘Shame!’
He’d soiled his boots and his Regency suit,
Was bound with his watch and chain.

They lie not far from the caravans
Of a gypsy camping ground,
So Faeries say: ‘Let’s take them away
Before they’re seen and found!’
But dancing into the faery ring
Is the Gypsy, Mavourneen,
Who stumbles over the gilded cage
And steps on the Faery Queen.

The top flies off from the gilded cage,
The webs of the bars are torn,
And Garth crawls over the mushroom heads
To swear, ‘I feel reborn!’
The faeries weep as they carry their Queen
In death, to their Faery Dell,
There’s mushrooms still in that Faery Ring,
But now, Toadstools as well!

David Lewis Paget

May 2014 Michelle

Crow!

May 2014 Michelle

David Lewis Paget

Crow!

The wind was swaying the treetops as
I cut across from the church,
The sun had darkened behind the clouds
When I saw the crow on its perch,
Its feathers fluttered, it looked quite grim
As it sat there, quite on its own,
But watching me with a beady eye
From the top of a blank headstone.

I pulled the collar around my ears
And hunched in my overcoat,
The wind was bringing a bitter chill
To whip at my face and throat,
I staggered over and off the path,
Walked over the headstone plot,
And felt a shiver run down my spine
To wonder what time she’d got.

The crow had uttered a single ‘caw’
From the depths of its blue-black beak,
Then spread its wings like an avatar
And lashed a **** in my cheek,
I stumbled off, I could feel the blood
As it ran, from under my eye,
And hurried home, though I flung a stone
At the crow as it flew on by.

But Rachel stood at the window as
I came in the gate, at last,
She saw the blood, and she put her hand
On up to her mouth, aghast.
I told her it was a minor cut
A thorn on a rose that waved,
She shuddered, flooded her eyes with tears,
Said, ‘Someone walked on my grave!’

‘Someone walked on my grave,’ she said
‘Not even an hour ago…’
My mind went back to the headstone, and
The evil glare of the crow.
‘You’re overwrought, you should sit and rest,
Get warm, for the room is dank,’
But all I could see in my mind just then
Was a headstone that was blank.

I’d taken her from a cruel home
For her parents both were dead,
She’d been brought up by a grandmother
Who was violent, sick she said.
She’d threatened me when we went away
That she’d not be long my bride,
And Rachel never felt safe with me
‘Til her grandmother had died.

I managed to catch the warden when
I saw him, late in the week,
‘Why is that headstone blank?’ I said,
‘Whose is the grave you keep?’
‘There’s no-one buried under that stone,
It was raised for a future soul,
A woman came in the driving rain
And paid for that grave with gold.’

‘But surely you have a name for her
In the graveyard book; you’d know.’
He knitted his brow, and thought aloud:
‘I think that her name was Crow!
She dressed in black, in a mourning gown
With a cloak that looked like wings,
Then vanished, as she had first appeared
When I turned to ask her things.’

I passed the stone on the way back home,
And I stared, my mouth ajar,
For someone had cut a letter there
In the face of the stone, an ‘R’,
I thought of Rachel, hurried on home
But was late, too late I know,
For flying past as I reached the gate
Was the dread form of the crow.

It crashed straight into the window where
My Rachel stood and stared,
Dressed in black, in a mourning gown
It was just as I had feared.
The window smashed as the crow had crashed
With shards of glass all round,
The crow embedded in Rachel’s throat
As she choked her last on the ground.

She lay with both of her arms outstretched
Like a pair of wings in black,
The bird ripped open her jugular,
She wouldn’t be coming back.
I knew she’d hated her grandmother,
She remembered every blow,
But didn’t think she’d be coming back
Though her maiden name was ‘Crow!’

David Lewis Paget

May 2014 Michelle

don't romanticize my pain.

May 2014 Michelle

Georgia Marginson-Swart

don't romanticize my pain.

I guess you could call it poetic how by the age of 12 I had no recollection of what happiness tasted like on my tongue. Some would say it was tragically beautiful.
But it was not poetic, nor was it beautiful, but it was tragic. It was so very, very sad, and that sadness is only doubled now that people see sorrow as glorious. It is not glorious. It is not strength. It is a lump of iron in your chest and stomach and it eats you from the inside, out and you have no right to think that blood stained wrists are anything other than tragic. So very, very tragic.

May 2014 Michelle

Next Time Around

May 2014 Michelle

David Lewis Paget

Next Time Around

I’d come back home from an early shift
When I wasn’t expected - True!
But the house on the hill was cold and still
So I went off, looking for you.
I couldn’t find you at your parents place,
They said they hadn’t a clue,
Your brother said he’d not seen your face
Since the day we spent at the zoo.

It wasn’t like you to disappear,
You might have left me a note,
It wasn’t until I came back home
That I found one, stuffed in my coat.
‘I’ve gone to the place that dreamers go
When the world is getting them down,
Gone where a dreamer’s dreams would seem
To be better, next time around.’

My heart flipped once and it almost stopped,
I’d thought we were doing well,
We’d been together for seven years
I was truly caught in your spell.
I’d thought that your air of discontent
Was a phase, but I couldn’t see,
You left on the first full day of Lent
So you were giving up me!

I wandered around our empty house
For days, in the throes of grief,
I felt my heart had been torn apart,
Then I thought of my cousin, Keith.
He’d lodged with us for a month or so
And I’d seen the spark in his eyes,
But barely noticed the answering glow
Of your own, so now - Surprise!

I found a bundle of letters then
In the back of your bedside drawer,
From him to you and from you to him,
I’d never looked there before.
They spilled their passion on every page
Like a toadstool, spreading its spore,
His love was greater than mine, he said,
He’d love you forevermore.

And you said terrible things of me
That I’d treated you with neglect,
That I’d taken your love for granted, and
Was an albatross round your neck.
I couldn’t believe the things I read
From the one that I’d loved to death,
But now, I knew what you really said
With every disloyal breath.

You’d slept with him while I went to work,
He’d never worked in his life,
But like a Judas he’d worked his will
On you, a deceitful wife.
My stomach turned and I felt quite sick,
For days, it tumbled and churned,
The pain in my heart was like a brick
Til the day that my anger burned.

* * * * *

A month went by and she came again
To knock at our own front door,
‘I’ve made an awful mistake,’ she said
As her tears ran down on the floor.
‘I’ll do whatever it takes,’ she said,
‘To make the pain go away.’
My eyes were sad but my heart was glad
As I said what I had to say.

‘I’ve gone to the place that dreamers go
When the world is getting them down,
Gone where a dreamer’s dreams would seem
To be better, next time around.
I haven’t a place in my life for you
Since you left with such little grace,’
Then I shook my head, for my love was dead
And I slammed the door in her face.

David Lewis Paget

May 2014 Michelle

A Choice we Make

May 2014 Michelle

IncadesentCat

A Choice we Make

Our world is our perception
It is our pain
It is our happiness
It is our love

So why, when it feels so bad
do we dwell so long
on the foremost?

#overcomming

May 2014 Michelle

Key to the Door

May 2014 Michelle

David Lewis Paget

Key to the Door

They said she suffered from visions, so
They locked her up in her room,
I heard her pacing the floor in there
To softly cry in the gloom,
Her food they slid in under the door
And that’s when I heard her shout:
‘You can’t keep me forever in here,
You must let my nightmares out!’

But a doctor listened outside the door
And shook his head as he went,
A Priest then wafted some incense in
And muttered a sacrament,
But no-one dared to unlock the door
For they’d heard a howl within,
‘She must be conjuring demons there
Or some terrible type of sin.’

At night when everyone was asleep
I’d put my head to the floor,
And whisper low to my sister through
The gap, just under the door.
‘Go find the key,’ she would say to me,
‘And unlock the door in the night,
We’ll creep on out while the house is still,
Take off while the Moon is bright.’

I didn’t know where to find the key,
I didn’t know where it was,
It wasn’t hung up on the kitchen hook
Or the nail in the wooden cross.
She begged me, ‘Keep on looking for it,
It’s the only chance for me,
Then we will be together again
At last, and finally free!’

But then her visions returned again
And lights shone under the door,
While sounds, like animals caught in pain
Built up to a sullen roar.
I whispered, ‘Sis, can you hear me now,
I’m scared,’ and started to bawl,
She cried, ‘There’s lights and a million things
All creeping out of the wall.’

I went to beat on our parent’s door
But I heard my father snore,
I ran downstairs and I found the key
They’d hid in the bureau drawer.
I hesitated before I turned
The key in my sister’s lock,
The door swung open and lay ajar
As I stood, stock-still in shock.

For in the room was a wooded glade
With creepers clogging the walls,
Bats were hung from the old lampshade,
The bed was a waterfall,
But of my sister, never a sign
She must have been lost in the trees,
But monsters struggled out of the wall
As I fell in dread to my knees.

They say I suffer from visions, so
They’ve locked me up in my room,
I couldn’t cope with my sister’s loss
They said, but she’s in a tomb.
I know she’s not, for I hear her whisper
Under the door at night,
‘We’ll creep on out while the house is still,
Take off while the Moon is bright.’

Then sounds, like animals caught in pain
Build up to a sullen roar,
I call for her, again and again,
‘Just get the key to the door.’
But then she fades, and she slips away,
So far that I have to shout:
‘You can’t keep me forever in here,
You must let my nightmares out!’

David Lewis Paget