The Tattooed

It's National Poetry Month!

It's another April here on Tattoosday, which means its another installment of the Tattooed Poets Project. For thirty days in April, we will be featuring the tattoos of poets, along with a sample of their work. Unlike previous years, we will be including the contributor's poem in the post here, rather than in a separate parallel post on BillyBlog.



Regular "on the street" tattoos will take a break and resume here in May. For the last few months, I have been reaching out to poets nationwide, and collecting their tattoos to showcase here. You can check out the 2009 and 2010 poets in the index here.



Thanks to all who are involved, along with, but not exclusively, Stacey at the Best American Poetry blog, Dorianne Laux, and Patricia Carragon, who curates the Brownstone Poets, many of who are joining us this year.



Enjoy!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Michael Henry Lee

Today's tattoo was submitted by Michael Henry Lee:

Photo courtesy of Michael Henry Lee

There's a lot going on here, so let's let Michael explain:

"The work pictured began about 36 years ago in Kansas City, Mo. I only remember the artist's name as John. The piece started with the stylized exotic bird's head that John took credit for as his own. A few years later I found the same piece on the back of a Mountain album cover. Imagine. Fast forward a couple of decades to a fantastic shop [Soul Expressions Tattoo Studio] in Temecula Ca. and an artist named Dan Adair. The sun and Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah were added there. The sun was David's design and the Lion comes from the Ethiopian flag borrowed from a Bob Marley album. The conceptual idea was mine and is meant to be symbolic of the Christian trinity: Father (as the sun), the Son (as the Conquering Lion) and our old buddy the bird (as the holy spirit). The seven is symbolic of the biblical number of completion and is repeated three times. The piece was just retouched and colored last year in Saint Augustine, Florida, by Tattoo Mike from Tattoo Garden."

Michael also offered up several short poems, including some haiku:

"tattoo impressions"

    van goes home

stepping out in a starry night    

(first appeared in graffiti kolkata Aug 2010)

~

tattoo garden

 the blush returns

 to mother's rose

~

What Love’s Got to do with It

It was rumored of late

that Love;

is suffering from a stolen identity

Eros has hacked into Agape

like the evil twin exchanged at birth;

     Ying for Yang

           The Pauper for the Prince

                    Cain for Abel

The imposter has taken control

using seduction and guile

to manipulate the hearts and minds

of whoever might be deceived

Love’s calling all investors

Setting the record straight

Distancing itself from a nefarious sibling

Love does not

          sell cars, clothes, food, or personal hygiene products

Love knows

          the grass isn’t greener in the next field,

          and besides brown is highly underrated anyway

Love always makes deposits

          but not withdrawals

Love is patient as water

          smoothing stone          

Love knows the worst

          but hopes for the best

Love bites its tongue and swallows its pride

Love looks at the heart

          not: boobs, biceps, or bank accounts

Love is the first one into a burning building

          an the last one off a sinking ship

Love builds

         Marriages

             Families

                  and  Nations 

                                                            

Love is an invisible necessity

         like  time, gravity, and oxygen

Love is beyond time and space

Eternal

Unconditional

                          a

                         gift

                    a promise

            one poured out for all 

                     that they

                       might

                        know

                         that

                         God

                           is

                           L

                           O

                           V

                           E

"What Love's Got to do with It" first appeared in Heart Pour The Love Book from Poet Plant Press, 2011

~

Michael Henry Lee is a husband, father and grandfather. He and his wife of 30 years reside in St. Augustine, Florida; the nation’s oldest city, along with two cats, and numerous bonsai trees.

Michael is a member of Ancient City Poets and the Haiku Society of America. The last Sunday of every month generally finds him at the Heart Pour Matinee; an open mic poetry reading that features seasoned artists as well as new talents. 

Mr. Lee serves as contributing co-editor for Poet Plant Press, and is a frequent contributor to Haiku News, and Haiku Ramblings. His work has appeared in Berry Blue Haiku, and Graffiti Kolkata He was voted among the favorites in the 2009 Alibi Weekly annual haiku contest, and was awarded third place prize in the Yukei Teikei Annual Tokutomi Haiku Contest for 2010.

Mr. Lee is quoted as saying “my objective is to express the good news and mystery of life in every breath, through the simplicity of haiku”.

Thanks to Michael Henry Lee for sharing his tattoo and his work with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poems are reprinted here with the permission of the author.



If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Lorraine Conlin

Today's tattooed poet is Lorraine Conlin, one of several Long Island wordsmiths featured this month on the Tattooed Poets Project.



Lorraine offers up this beautiful tattoo on the upper right side of her back:

Photo courtesy of Lorraine Conlin

Lorraine gives us the background of this lovely La:

"My first and only tattoo (so far), was self-designed with a bit of enhancement by Syxx, of Wyld Chyld Tattoo in Merrick, NY, where I co-host poetry events in their adjoining café.  La is the Lilliputianized form of my original nickname, Lala.  Before I said Mama or Dada, as most babies do, I uttered Lala and from that day forward, my family referred to me as their “little Lala”. 

Photo courtesy of Lorraine Conlin

The name stayed with me and friends and business associates starting calling me “La”.  While hosting the open mic at Wyld Chyld Tattoo & Café, I met Syxx, (Raymond Obrien) who is with the Metal Group, “The Saints of Pain”.  He signed up to read one night and read something he had written.  We started talking and I asked if I had any ink.  I told him I was afraid of infection and I was allergic to lots of foods and meds. He asked me which ones and when I said sulfur, he said I could get any colors except yellow or any that had yellow in their composition.  He was so reassuring, knowledgeable and gentle that I went home that night and started thinking about what to get and where I wanted it.  I sketched it out and brought him the sketch.  We made a date, he made the stencil and the rest is history."

Lorraine was kind enough to share this poem with us: 

A Wannabe Fantasy

I told my shrink I wannabe a back warmer

sit on a bitch pad behind a biker guy

wrap my arms round his ape-hanger grip

straddle his bar-hopper bike on Friday nights

ride with a big bearded chromosexual guy

cruise the big road to nowhere…

I wanna goggle the horizon -- eat asphalt

let my puppies hang loose

wear black leather chaps

and a purple skid lid

“I don’t think you do.” He said

Yes, I do

I love bikers

especially the B.U.G.s

the bigger, uglier the guy

the harder they try

the better they make me feel

told him I rode hard and long with a few

before these confession sessions

He said. “We have to stop now.”

I found a new therapist

she loves to listen

to my biker-chick fantasies

rides along with me

always asks

“How does that make you feel”…

~ ~ ~

Lorraine Conlin is a US Customs Broker at JFK Airport. She is on the BOD of The Long Island Poetry Collective, hosts “Tuesdays With Poetry” for Poets in Nassau, and co-hosts for PerformancePoets Association at Wyld Chyld Tattoo & Café in Merrick, LINY. Her work has been published in PPA Literary Review(s), LongIsland Sounds Anthology(s).  Lorraine initiated and hosts Super Poem Sunday, where folks gather to celebrate the sport of poetry on Super Bowl Sunday.  She is also the founder of the Long Island Poets for Darfur.  Lorraine is currently working on her first book of poems.

Thanks to Lorraine for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.



If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Nescher Pyscher

Today's tattooed poet is named Nescher Pyscher and hails from Cambridge, Ohio.

Nescher offered  up his right wrist for us here at Tattoosday:

Photo courtesy of Nescher Pyscher

Nescher explains:

"The tattoo was done in two parts. The first part was my wife's name in Chinese, surrounded by an infinity symbol. It was my wedding present for her. I designed the tattoo myself, and I was inspired to do so by a ink-stamper-thing-y my wife's father brought home for her from China. The second part, my son's name, was my wife's Christmas present to me when our son was born. I do not remember the name of the tattoo studios or the artists, but both tats were procured in the Akron, Ohio area."

As a matter of clarification, I asked Nescher about the kanji representing his wife's name. He told me that the "three symbols mean--so I've been told--'Mother,' 'Earth' and 'Love.' " He added that she is a geologist, by occupation.

Photo courtesy of Nescher Pyscher

As for his son's name, Geir, he clarified that his name means Spear, which is Icelandic or Norwegian, in origin. Nescher added that "names with value and freighted with meaning are important in my family. He is the strong weapon in my right hand, the spear we cast into the future."

As for a poem, Nescher, offered up this piece:

dustbitten

i plant the seed of myself within myself--

mutated, cloned, half-life-whole that

gropes toward darkening life--

and watch the poisoned weed of me grow.

i am the frozen feathers of a bird in flight,

locked to dead tree, dying in estrous,

decayed in birth, and forgotten before the wind

could sweep through feathers.

i am eye,

i am face,

i am ear

i am the frozen corpse at the bottom of the well

leaking into life; oozing into being;

draining into dream and desire

i am fist

i am nail

i am bent, broken finger

i water the tumors of me with the salt of my tears

the iron tang of my blood,

the sweet toxin of my urine.

i am teeth

i am tongue

i am busily working lips

i eat my flesh, taken straight from crippled vine

and wince at the taste of my self-inflicted pain,

juices running unchecked down my pocked and hairless

chin

i am blister

i am burn

i am wounded, weeping sore

my madness drives me, sings inside me

and keeps me warm

the feel of meeting teeth on my broken skin feels

like warm rain in the evening;  

sun setting on life forever

i am stone

i am flesh

i am dust

 ~ ~ ~

Nescher Pyscher--his real name. Honest!--is a happily married, thirty-five year old author and poet living, writing and staying at home with his son in the Cambridge, Ohio area. His writing can be found at Weebly.com, Helium.com, Pablo Lennis, and his book of short stories, Itchy Whispers, is now available from Trafford or Amazon.com. His adventures in ineptitude with his son, The Pants, can be read twice weekly at The Daily Jeffersonian.  

Thanks to Nescher for sharing his tattoos and his poetry with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.



If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Sue Swartz

Today's tattooed poet, Sue Swartz, hails from Bloomington, Indiana, and offers up her forearm for all the world to see:

Photo by John Narmontas

Sue explains:

This is a 2-part tattoo story. On my 54^th birthday, I had the Hebrew word for truth (emet) imprinted on my right (i.e., writing) forearm in traditional black Torah script. I wanted a useful reminder for my art; also the word contains one letter that is a stand-in for life/God and two others that spell out the word “dead”. Okay, it was a little heavy. Two years later, this past November, when I couldn’t take looking at the damn truth anymore, Dina Verplank of Voluta Tattoo in Indianapolis beautified the baldness of the lone word with a branch from the Tree of Life and a spiral/root system.

Photo by John Narmontas

 And Sue offers up this poem:

MID-LIFE

Damn. Another 3 a.m. flying dream.

This time I’m on a cement slab hurtling toward over-grown lawns

covered with large plastic pigs and spiked coat hangers.

This is not what normal people dream.

Awake, I tilt (normal, not normal) on a giant seesaw of guilt

by association and realize:

I might not really know what normal is—

My dead – crazy bastards every one – left far too many clues,

though not one legible note of navigational instruction.

Minds overtaken by spirals and whirligigs, Greek letters

and the rising price of toilet paper, they wore the warp & weave

of their affliction stoically.

Seamlessly, one might say, and with understated finesse.

Running off to Florida on a Tuesday-morning whim:

In the realm of normal.

Snapped-on pills for breakfast:

Mildly normal.

Washing, washing again, again, again. Refusing to shake

the hand of strangers:

Undeniably normal (well, yeah – you never know

who’s got what).

With garments torn & heads made bare, they bob in and out

of traffic, sit close to me in restaurants, carefully chewing

with their electrode mouths.

My dead have secrets. That much is abundantly clear.

I listen for whispers of their generous madness, find

they’ve come while I’m asleep. Bad timing is all I’ve got.

That, and fingerprints left on the towels.

No, I don’t shush them away: then I’d lose the true nature

of everything. If I don’t know what normal is, why not

claim these people as kin?

How else to name my own impurities and small derangements?

~ ~ ~

Sue Swartz is a poet, hired-gun-political writer, amateur ballroom dancer, favored grandparent, social justice activist, occasional yogini, and creator of alternative Jewish ritual. Her work has been published in Cutthroat Magazine, Lilith, 5 a.m., SmartishPace, and elsewhere. She wishes she had a book you could buy. You can find her blog Awkward Offerings at http://swartzsue.wordpress.com/. She makes her home in Bloomington, Indiana and believes that Leviticus (You are not to make gashes in your flesh for the dead nor incise marks on yourself.) goes a bit overboard.



Thanks to Sue for sharing her truthful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! 

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.



If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

 

The Tattooed Poets Project: Noemi Soto

Today's tattooed poet is Noemi Soto, who sent us this lovely, colorful photo of her tattoo:

Photo Courtesy of Noemi Soto

Noemi explains:

"I designed the tattoo for myself during a pretty rough period after a major breakup about 6 years ago. I wanted it to represent the heartbreak that I was feeling at the time but still hold hope for the future. The artist who tattooed me was Danielle Distefano while she was working out of Dare DevilTattoo on Ludlow Street in Manhattan."

Danielle is currently tattooing out of Only You Tattoo in Atlanta, Georgia.



Noemi offers up this poem:

The Beginning is the End is the Beginning

Back when I was younger

My mother tried to protect my heart

Always telling me to never bare my insides for a man

to never let him in fully so that he may devour what I hold dear

to not let a man do to me what had been done to her



Her backbone used to show signs of strength but now lacks the stamina to withstand the battle

She was once a woman so strong in her will

but with every man in her life taking pieces of her for themselves

she has now become a mere shell of herself

The stink of her childhood still lingering in her hair



I was witness to the tug of war my father and her used to play

saw the push and pull of their hearts

there was nothing unconditional about their love

not even when it came to me

there is nothing sentimental and heartfelt in the throwing of pots, pans and fists

“I love you” cannot be said through the gnashing of one’s teeth



So when it came time for my will to be tested

I acted on what I saw and not what I was told

What I was shown was that to be a woman meant having to bend your spine so far back to please your man that you broke yourself in two

To stretch those parts of yourself out so that you may give him the smoothest of surfaces in which he may stomp your hopes and dreams into

To ignore his faults and accept them as your own

How dare you even think otherwise?



I was taught that… to be a woman meant having to pick up the pieces that were left behind from his war path

making sure only your feet bled in the process to save his

Being a woman always meant never asking any questions

to let him roam and if he comes back … well… what more do you want?



I followed all of these lessons very carefully

made sure I folded the laundry just right

had dinner ready when he came home

and always made sure to give him his space

only to find myself face down on the floor, arms pinned behind me, with all of his weight pressing his right knee into my back

I waited until he left the room to get up



I stayed in silence

still willing to be the woman behind the man

Still willing to be the glass which he slammed his fist against

shattering any sense of self worth I had just for him

I began to wonder if this really was what it meant to be a woman or just the kind of woman who was so lost in herself that she was willing to let a man tell her what she should be

and if it did …. Then I had to learn to become my own woman

and I couldn’t do that by being underneath his thumb



So I bent back each one of his fingers till they snapped at the joints to show him how serious I was

It was the only way to break free

and while he screamed in pain and cursed me for having been born



I cleared a way for myself through the broken home which I was sure would last forever

letting him know that he no longer had a hold on me

~~~

Noemi Soto is a Brooklyn, New York native who was born and raised in Coney Island and is a recent transplant to Queens. Her poetry has been featured in a variety of publications such as The Acentos Review, The Literary Burlesque, LitUp Magazine & South Jersey Underground. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and is currently working on her first book. You can read more of her work  at her website here.

Thanks to Noemi for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.



If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.