Hellworm

A familiar theme in my writing through the years, though this one is fairly recent. I believe I wrote this last summer.

Burying deeper that which devours me,
Hellworm taken form of man.
Oft times festering, infesting, ingesting
venomous bile. Lo, the sting of defeat.

Within lies the shell of my former self,
A man, a creator, an innocent child.
Excision marking, marring, scarring
the eventual tomb of its weakening host.
  
To attempt to purge is to anger the beast.
Constricting affliction, afflicting constriction.
I feel it, its needs. It feeds. I heed
the summoning, call of the serpent.

I swallow it whole, my pride my demise.
No one must know, my ill, my fail,
my cross of shame, nameless, pain.
This burden alone I must bear to my end.

by Derek Herzberg

"Bloodworm" by lamiot, from english wikipedia with : "Photo by me, Jasper Nance. 4X lomo objective, 10X ocular. Taken with a Pentax K10D and a substage flash using a condenser stop for darkfield effect." - English Wikipedia (page Woodworm). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bloodworm.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Bloodworm.jpg