Red Pen

“Except you'enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.”
John Donne

O, Red Pen,

much maligned, mark in blood, the battle ground of
academic paper that would be
black and virgin white.

Expose the naked hypocrisy of my mediocrity;
and break, like Hymen, my dull, dun draft with
the marks of your passion:

bloody me, cut and write on me,
wound me to the edge of Death and
through Perfection, make me free.