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In Sepsis Ascendo
So I am a villain—is that what you wish to call me?
If you want to bestow a title, I'll be your appointee
But really, ‘villain’ is so typical, so underwhelming, so lame
If I’m to have a title, I’ll have a different name
For, you see, I’ll infiltrate while you are vulnerable
And though it is a lie, I’ll tell you I am merciful
I’ll wrap you around my finger and then and only then
Can the real games and the destruction begin
Not a villain: I am a sickness, creeping from within
I am bruise-purple blisters against ash-pale skin
I am fevered gasps choked from burning hot lips
I am furiously gulped water in drowning desperate sips
I am red tears sliding down dank and ashen flesh
I am purple pustules bursting in a grotesque broken mesh
Of screaming fluid, poison corroding unexposed skin
I am the stomach acid consuming itself until your grasp on life is thin
I will enmesh you, sweet one, in ghostly tangling webs
Of suspicion and lies, I’ll drain faith till it ebbs
I will crumble your resolve, turn your mind to splintering shards
Until I am the only one for whom you drop your guard
Your thoughts will be thorn-filled thickets, raking red lines as you try
To release a howl, your struggles masked and cloaked from the sky
In your eyes shall be daggers, silver piercing scleras’ white
Each attempt to see bringing searing pain and plunging further into night
And in the end, your tortured mind will turn against itself, it will
Mistake flesh for infection, shower your veins with chemicals that kill
Until inflammation spreads and chokes your breath
Your soul is on fire, as you creep toward death
You call me a villain, I propose that I’m not
For isn’t sepsis the body’s natural reaction to rot?
Is it villainous truly, to be flicking a match
Toward a dry tinder forest and watching it catch?
For as embers explode as trees scream in dismay
I’ll be watching and grinning from far above the fray
Yes, I am a villain, and inwardly I embrace
What you scream at me in agony, what you spit upon my face
Insult me, and I shall raze you, in a single, crushing blow
And the best part? Only when the damage is irreparable shall you my actions know
In sepsis ascendo, per morte consumo tu
In sepsis I rise, through death I devour you.
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A poetic exploration of Machiavellian rhetoric, written from the perspective of a fictional villain. The title comes from the Latin translation of “In Sepsis I Rise”.