Tainted

There is a darkness growing inside me
A lingering evil, just waiting to be free
Some monster or demon, lurking around my head
A corrupting presence just begging to be fed

Time and again, I cut the corruption back
Time and again, a tiny piece hides in some forgotten crack
There it waits, silently, waiting to start
Endlessly probing the weaknesses of my vulnerble heart

I can feel it growing as I lay awake at night
In the darkness, when my mind has no will to fight
Spreading, slowly, throughout my mind
A new way of torture it attempts to find

My mind, tainted, fills with dread
Soon, gentle voices fill my head
Succumb, they say, to your fleshly desires
I try to block them out, but they feel like fire

I cut it, I beat it, I watch it burn
but somehow, the darkness continues to return
The poison spreads, into my very bones
The voices in my head take on more persuasive tones

In the end, I succumb and do as they say
In the end, I have lost, never having my own way
The voices eventually lead me too a knife
My mind, sensing danger, springs back to life

Pain, darkness, the world starts to twist
Too late, as blood pours from my wrist
Watching my life flow away, I silently wait
Until, suddenly, the blood stops as if by a gate

What reason have I to deserve this chance?
My mind clears, the fog raised, I wake from my trance
With horror I realize what I had just done
It was then I realized what I had become

With new determination I cut it back
Hunted the darkness down through every crack
Hunt as I might, I can still feel it lurk
Down in the depths of my heart, covered in murk

Impossible to find, impossible to kill
It waits, patiently, to steal my will
Someday I hope to be free of this sin
But what if this feeling comes from within?

What if this presence isn't some being?
What if all my actions are my own hidden feeling?
What if the reason for its return and its stealth,
what if the reason is because it is myself?