There was a moment
Where my body just quit
Following the plan.

Cotton-coated vipers told me
I wasn’t the rebel,
No, my blood had that job
My own internal Benedict Arnold

Coldly they told me that
 A phalanx of traitors
Sped through my blood-stream,
White-clad and brutal,
And in every vein.

Dividing and dividing,
Unceasing, unheeding,
The little bastards, once benign,
Once the greatest of helpers,
Now perversely, bringers of sleep,
A most mortal rest.

And the vipers came,
They poked and they prodded,
They sampled and drew blood,
They filled me with poison,
My blood stream, a scorched earth,
My skin, crackled, stretched
And alight with chemical pain.

But the therapy worked,
Five years of murder by inches,
A small price to pay.