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I wanted to write a poem about remaining true to your ideals. I just watched Cloud Altas, so I used a quote. With my science background, I immediately thought of infection. Maybe I should include the lines of defense? I love the ideas presented in this poem, but hate its redundancy, lack of rhythm and rhyme. :/
But then again, I haven't written in months.

Parentheses are to express thoughts for further edits. Pretend they are not there.

Original:
Tattoo it to your mind
Let it live in you with permanence and pain
Let its infection pervade you
May its malady morph the host
Into the ideas applied in ink
And rebuke the realities that interfere

Edit 1:
Tattoo it to your mind
And let it change you in its permanence
And its pain - not from only the pressure applied by ink
But from the painstaking refusal to bend in your direction
To err in your perfection
Allow this untouched tattoo
To infect and pervade you (metastisize?)
(Turning your blood to ink)
Realize that superficial barriers will fail you
The natural killers within you
With their undescerning and unremitting malice
Will falter too
But your antibodies, the final and truest line, will recognize that
This is the new you
There will be fever, sweat, and pain
(But more has been lost in the past than there is now to gain)
But more has been past lost for not so much a gain

Byproduct of Edit 1:
Realize that your lines of defense will fail you
Your skin, broken, exposed you
Your indiscriminate killers within
Undermined you
But your final line
That attacks with a selective eye
Saw no danger
In this (familiar) stranger