Thursday, April 12, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Emily Harrison

Today we have another tattooed poet from "across the Pond".

Emily Harrison sent us this lovely tattoo from the United Kingdom:


Emily explains:
"It was the first appointment of the day on my 18th birthday at Sinking The Ink in Swindon and I finally got to get the tattoo. I ignored friends and family warning me not to commit to such a lifelong commitment at such a 'young and impressionable age' and, being quite the goody-two-shoes for most of my life, went for it. My inspiration is Ted Hughes' collection of work, Crow (sometimes I can bend the truth slightly and give a nod if anyone asks Edgar Allen Poe) and I now have a perching taxidermy crow to match it."
By way of poetry, Emily has offered up this item for our enjoyment:

Instantly Your Biggest Fan

I want to hear you describe my look
as blood in the sugar bowl
my attitude as the paddling pool
blown onto the M4 causing a pile up
you don’t
love me
you should
when we go to the seaside
I wont even moan
when I drop my ice cream
and when you offer me yours
I wont accept
I’ll make your tongue ache
until its like you’ve been
sucking on fudge
you’ll have dreams
where you save me
from wreckages
burning freak accidents
the one you love
and the one who loves you
are never ever the same person
now fall in love with me
as if I were a French girl
on a postcard
~ ~ ~

I generally don't comment on the poems, but I like this one very much and am thankful Emily sent it our way.

Emily Harrison won the Christopher Tower Poetry Prize in 2010 and is set to be published in the April edition of Popshot Magazine. Her poetry is scarlet, penetrating, funny and honest. Emily does beautiful, stark and memorable words. She has red hair, perpetual lipstick and high heels. She adds, "I find inspiration from the men in my life; some painfully thin, most aggressively passionate, all with strange hair cuts."

Thanks to Emily for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!
This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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.

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Sammi Skolmoski

Whenever possible, I try and correspond our posts with corresponding dates. So, when Sammi Skolmoski sent this tattoo in, April 11 seemed appropriate:


Why this tattoo today? April 11, 2012 marks five years since the great Kurt Vonnegut passed away and, as Sammi explains:

" 'Goodbye, Blue Monday' is the alternate title of Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. It is my favorite book - one in which Vonnegut’s masterful use of satire and science result in a climax where he, as author, enters the pages as master/manipulator supreme, to indefinitely release his indentured characters from narrative confinement. The 'meta' relationship between writer and character — that they answer to, and are, the same person — changed my attitude toward writing, and rid me of the dreadful seriousness I often assigned it.

And, I just adore sunflowers. The floral manifestation of a ruling cosmic entity! The perfect warrior to bid goodbye to any blue Monday’s to come."

Sammi credits this piece to Mario Desa at the Chicago Tattooing & Piercing Company.

Not only do we get this tattoo from Sammi, but she has also provided us with one of her poems:

ALCHEMIST’S LAMENT

He is monochromatose
transmuted by kaleidoscope
inherent in his daily dose
of bioluminescent dope.

A regulated water bath
that leavens into churning gas
facilitates the stoneward path
of drowning yellow jars of glass

the philosophic red and white
beheld as sacred, even nigh,
rears ancient alchemistic plight
of whole salve dangling near his thigh.

~~~

Sammi Skolmoski is a writer and multimedia artist living in Los Angeles who curates a quarterly lit zine called “Madness, Barely” and is a frequent contributor to San Diego Citybeat. She surrounds herself with mystics, gazes at the sky, and plays her records LOUDLY.

Thanks to Sammi for her contribution to The Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.


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.

Monday, April 9, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Traci Brimhall

Today's tattooed poet is Traci Brimhall, who shares this single word with us:


Traci explains:
"I got my tattoo last April during the Little Grassy Literary Festival at Carbondale, IL. I was in Carbondale to do a reading from my first book, when I got the email that my second book had been accepted. I wanted to do something to mark the occasion, something both wild and permanent, and there was a poet and tattoo artist, Ruth Awad, at the dinner table who offered to give me my first ink. I spent that night celebrating in Ruth's kitchen getting my first tattoo.
I chose the word Duende, a word the Spanish poet Frederico Garcia Lorca said represented "a power, not a work. It is a struggle, not a thought." A guitar maestro had once explained it to him this way: 'The duende is not in the throat; the duende climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet.' When people ask me to explain it, I usually say it's an art that asks you to do battle with what is darkest in you, and what comes out is already baptized by black sounds."
Here is the poem Traci selected for us to read:

Aubade with a Broken Neck

The first night you don’t come home
summer rains shake the clematis.
I bury the dead moth I found in our bed,
scratch up a rutabaga and eat it rough
with dirt. The dog finds me and presents
between his gentle teeth a twitching
nightjar. In her panic, she sings
in his mouth. He gives me her pain
like a gift, and I take it. I hear
the cries of her young, greedy with need,
expecting her return, but I don’t let her go
until I get into the house. I read
the auspices—the way she flutters against
the wallpaper’s moldy roses means
all can be lost. How she skims the ceiling
means a storm approaches. You should see
her in the beginnings of her fear, rushing
at the starless window, her body a dart,
her body the arrow of longing, aimed,
as all desperate things are, to crash
not into the object of desire,
but into the darkness behind it.

~ ~

Traci Brimhall is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins: Poems (W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Crab Orchard Series in Poetry) (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review, Slate, Virginia Quarterly Review, New England Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She was the 2008-09 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and currently teaches at Western Michigan University, where she is a doctoral associate and King/Chávez/Parks Fellow.

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



This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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: Gary McDowell

Our next tattooed poet is Gary McDowell. Here's what Gary had to say about his ink:
"I remember thinking as a teenager that I’d never get a tattoo. It wasn’t because I didn’t like them. I did. It wasn’t because I was afraid of the pain. I wasn’t. I think it had something to do with the fact that I had no idea what I would ever want permanently etched into my skin. But as I grew older and my obsessions and faiths and vocations started to align, I reconsidered, and now I don’t ever want to stop.
Both of my tattoos come from an artist, Blaine, at Baby Blues Tattoos in Bradenton, FL. My wife’s family has a condo on Anna Maria Island, FL, and so we visit every summer. In the summer of 2006 I got my first tattoo (the kanji for “poet/poetry” on my right wrist).
 
The impetus for it was simple: I’m right-handed and a poet, and so the thought of having poetry on my wrist appealed greatly to me.
Blaine did such a good job that in the summer of 2008, I went back and got my left calf worked on.
At the time, my wife was pregnant with our first son, and we planned to name him Auden; though his name was not totally derived from the poet W.H. Auden—my wife found the name in a baby book and dug it before she even knew it was a famous poet’s surname—I wanted to do something to commemorate my Auden’s impending arrival, and so I decided on two of my favorite lines from Auden’s 'The Question': 'And ghosts must do again / What gives them pain.' It’s a gorgeous reminder that we must conquer our fears, take a stance against what haunts us."
Gary sent us the following poem which, in his words, "exemplifies my work best":


THIS SUMMER WITH FISCHL

                                                       Waukegan, IL, June-July 2009

I must repent for this summer I’ve spent beyond creatures,

for the mysteries I’ve seen in a world

that thinks there are none, a world where we’ve named things—

garage, fence, robin, poem—so that we can feel

something when we destroy them.

I must repent for the chlorophyll in the leaves,

the time I’ve spent in the pool, no raft,

just my convexed back keeping me afloat,

for the hours wasted hoping the clouds above me

would form into something recognizable, something real

and weighted, so that I could be touched by something

other than a man begging for change outside the library.

I must repent for the sunflower, its aching, arcing

reach for light, for staring at the woman next-door,

her meticulous morning routine: compact the trash

in the can with a snow shovel, add a full bag from the kitchen,

return the lid to the can, and weight it with a ham-tin filled

with pennies. I too wouldn’t have believed it.

Every time I turn my head to look out the window,

I see a harsh light through the blinds, striping everyone with shadows,

I see Bad Boy: a teenaged boy, a purse full of money,

a nude woman (his mother?) on her bed, her leg bent, arched

toward her mouth—is she hungry, dreaming, bored?

John Yau says it’s the tiger stripes of light and dark

splayed across the woman that make her an animal, but I’m glad

she’s uncaged. What it must feel like to be stitched together,

thefted-after like a bowl of apples and bananas in a Freudian dream?

In another painting, a woman crawls naked through a backyard,

huddles against a row of hedges. While I haven’t seen that,

I must repent for the squirrel that fell from the tree,

for my dog who wouldn’t let go of its neck.

The hours I spent looking at beach scenes: I repent.

The incest, the drinking, the affairs, the nudity: I repent.

The thinking beyond line, beyond shape: I repent.

I repent: the patio tomato plants, watercolors, prints,

maquettes of the neighbor’s new garage, king crab legs

for dinner, a nude sunbather on her belly, her back damp,

her boombox sweating Shakira, Marc Anthony, and then silence.

The eavesdropping, the baseball on the radio, sweet peas and carrots.

For the old man across the street, his bad hips, his garbage can

that I move to the curb, his cane, too short for his arms: I repent.

In many of the paintings, I imagine a dialogue between

two quarreling lovers—or is it a monologue, a palette of yellows and reds

through the kitchen window each morning, their cups of coffee

barely settled on the counter before they begin. I must repent

for the unneighborly innuendos, the pile of dog shit

on the driveway that someone will surely step in, unaware that they have

until later, much later. I must repent for repenting, for repeating

myself, but this summer of recycling bins and large paper bags full

of lawn clippings has named me differently, and Fischl, his naked

eyes, have given me a hard-on for all things domestic:

gossiping, love-making, dog-walking, putting myself ahead

of myself only to find myself lost in myself, lost because

nothing is what it seems here. I must repent for spending so much

time with the mysteries of texture, with a book that weighs more

than my son, with my neighbors as if my neighbors were paintings,

as if their lives were canvassed, colored, hung on my eyelids.

The streets, the beaches, the neighbors: all starkly lit scenes,

a robust sense of everything having been played and replayed,

rehearsed like Sleepwalker, that skinny boy in the porch light, cock in hand.

The lawn chairs empty, and we watch him like we want to help him,

like we can touch him ourselves and make him stop, but he won’t stop,

not until the lights go out or the sun rises or we fall asleep watching.

I must repent for not watching more closely the bagpipe-lined

streets, for the way the doves peck at the window when they’re angry

or confused or cold or hungry. Perhaps I haven’t been

completely beyond creatures. Perhaps my creatures, destroyed,

I thought, before I started here, are merely lost in the lines,

the colors, the textures of a painting I have yet to encounter.


--originally appeared in Indiana Review, Vol 32, No 1

~ ~ ~

Gary L. McDowell's first full-length collection of poems, American Amen (Dream Horse Press, 2010), won the 2009 Orphic Prize for Poetry. He's also the author of two chapbooks, They Speak of Fruit (Cooper Dillon, 2009) and The Blueprint (Pudding House, 2005), and he's the co-editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Prose Poetry: Contemporary Poets in Discussion and Practice (Rose Metal Press, 2010). His poems have appeared in dozens of literary journals, including The Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, The Indiana Review, The Laurel Review, New England Review, Ninth Letter, and Quarterly West. He lives in Nashville, TN where he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Belmont University.

Thanks to Gary for his contribution to this year's Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.


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.

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Celtic knot stuff

This was done quickly, that's probably with it's not very regular in shape. Oh well, even when I spent hours it's not much better :]
 
Celtic tattoo design

(Oh, and to the guy from hannalovinda.blogspot: I have no problem with you republishing some of my stuff, but at least keep the "This work by tattoos-and-doodles..." untouched.  Rebloging it does not make it a "work by hannalovinda". Thank you :p )

The Tattooed Poets Project: Kayla Sargeson

Often people winder where I find all of our tattooed poets. Many come to us via word-of-mouth and through social media. This year, I found an anthology of poets "under 25," and figured that would be a good resource. Today's post, along with a few others, originated from that volume.

Today's tattooed poet is Kayla Sargeson. She is sharing this whimsical tattoo, which is her ninth:



This is Kayla's tattoo of an alien head that proclaims “I like chicken.” The artist is Pete Larkin at Kyklops Tattoo in Pittsburgh, PA.

I'll let Kayla explain the rest:
For the past year-and-a-half, I’ve been pursuing my MFA in Chicago, a city I’ve grown to hate. I feel like I don’t fit this city, or maybe it just doesn’t fit me. Regardless, I feel like an alien here that had to leave her home planet. Thus the alien tattoo. I go back and forth between Chicago and Pittsburgh often and during one of these visits, my mentor Jan Beatty was dropping me off at Kyklops [Tattoo]. She said “why don’t you have your alien say ‘I like chicken.’” I thought this was the funniest thing in the world, so I said “okay.” I walked into the shop where Pete was working on the alien. He showed me the sketch and I said “It looks perfect, except can the alien say ‘I like chicken’?” “Absolutely” said Pete and we were both standing in his little work station, cracking up. Because I have so many tattoos, I quit going for ones that have some soft, sentimental back story. I love to laugh and I like to be amused. I wake up to my alien every day and every day he makes me laugh.
Kayla sends us this poem:

Hellwave

Eleven tattoos and can’t stop
want my body covered/
no space for that night at the fraternity house:
body cracked open like glass.
I want a needle in my skin.
I’m the queen wasp thick and pissed off.
My friends say girl you’re on the fringe/
father likes to get me drunk/show off:
This is my smart daughter. The pretty one’s at home.
I know the push of a hand on the back of the head/
faceful of cock/baby no teeth
do what I tell you/stepfather’s raised fist: bitch I’ll hit you.
At the Rock Room, for a tit grab
it’s all-you-can-drink-all-night.
I’ll suck you off for a joint.
I’m looking for my studded Sid Vicious cliché:
skinny punk with the bass guitar.
He’s got the chain wallet, leans
against his amp and almost looks alive.
He rides a Fat Boy/he’ll get me out of here.
We’ll ride the hellwave screaming.

~ ~ ~

Kayla Sargeson earned a BA in creative writing from Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she was awarded the Award for Excellence in Creative Writing: Poetry. Her work has appeared in the national anthology, Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets under 25, selected by Naomi Shihab Nye, as well as Voices from the Attic Volume XIV, and Dionne’s Story. Her poems also appear, or are forthcoming in, 5 AM, Columbia Poetry Review, Chiron Review, Paper Street, Ophelia Street, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and phantom limb. She is attending the MFA program at Columbia College Chicago, where she is recipient of a Follet Fellowship and serves as an editor for the Columbia Poetry Review.

Thanks to Kayla for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.


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.

Saturday, April 7, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Jo Langton

Say what you will about the Tattooed Poets Project, but it has been dominated by Americans these past four years. Unless I'm forgetting someone, we've only had one poet featured from outside the U.S., and that was Claire Askew, whose ink appeared back in 2009 here.

Well, this year we are expanding a bit more, including a few more poets that reside outside of the States, and our first such shining example is Jo Langton.

Jo is sharing two tattoos, both of which were done by artists at Affleck’s Palace, in Manchester UK. She doesn't remember the artists' names and explains,
"I got both of these tattoos in a bit of a grief stricken haze. I did not form a relationship with the artists in question, I turned up on the day and they slotted me in there and then. I didn’t want the artist or the tattooing experience to overshadow the meaning."
This first tattoo was done in the spring of 2008:


Jo elaborates:
"The inspiration for this tattoo came, in part, from my over-indulgence in the song 'Let Go' by Frou Frou (featured on the Garden State soundtrack) and equally from the death of my Grandad. I wanted something visual to remind me to let go of my past misdemeanours and lack of motivation, and to signify a push forward in my life that sprung from my Granddad’s last words to me 'keep on keeping it up' in relation to the study of my degree."
She also shared this tattoo that was inked last summer, in 2011:


Jo Continues:
"When my Grandpa died a couple of years later, it felt only natural for me to once again, signify this time in my life. I had completed my degree and achieved a First Class Honours. Neither of my grandfathers were around to see this, but I know they both would have been proud to know I had made it. I was proud of myself, and proved that holding on to what I wanted from life would have fruitful effects, just as my Grandad had said three years earlier."
Here's a poem from Jo:

SAY IT W / POIS [ON]

she tried
silent
He pursed

‘Perhaps’    crisply,

pressing it against her        and resentful        unexpectedly

found another, eh ? you say, we go inside.

Indoors he bent over the doll
seemed singularly loath to touch
kind of stuff before the ox heart
answer and

surprised, you know
know anything about these horrible things
[I haven’t told her / if that’s what you mean]
admitting ?

folding his pale soft hands together
them on his turquoise knees
see the doll
its chief disfigurement
deliberately inflicted

either / a / sharp / knife / or / scissors

the human shape of the thing made it particularly sinister.

~ ~ ~


Jo Langton is a poet from Manchester, UK, currently studying her MA in Creative Writing at the University of Salford. She had her first chapbook published with Liverpool-based small press Erbacce and it can be found here. She has since gone on to be published online in Bare HandsThe Railroad Poetry Project, Streetcake and 3AM Magazine. She has a set of hand sew tea bags with word-leaves forthcoming from Zimzalla. 

Thanks to Jo for sharing her poem and tattoos with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.
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.

Thursday, April 5, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger

Today's tattooed poet is Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger. He sent in this sweet tattoo that is ideal for a crafter of words:


Bucho explains:
"It had been 12 years since I'd last gotten a tattoo and, having moved to San Francisco in 2009 to pursue my MFA in Writing, I felt it was time for another mile-marker. I had been writing off and on since 1995, but got much more serious about the craft around 2003. By the time the summer of 2010 rolled around, I had completed one novel, half-completed two others for my program, and had a slew of publishing credits for some of my flash fiction and my poetry. I wanted something big, something grand and awe-inspiring, something that would keep me motivated to continue writing even when stuck in the worst of ruts.

I always wait a year before getting any new ink done purely to make sure I want it. Once this grace period was over, I searched out artists in the bay area and found Gordon Combs at Seventh Son Tattoo. His art was both lifelike and cartoonish at the same time but without sacrificing any seriousness and I knew that he was the one I wanted. Thankfully, after months of trying to get an appointment settled, I went in for a six-hour session and had the whole piece done in a day. What I like most about the piece is that, when my arm is bent, the feather appears to be dipped into the spilled bottle of ink on the forearm. The effect is quite nice and I've received a lot of compliments on it, even though my artist is the guy who deserves the praise."
The following was submitted by Bucho for Tattoosday:

Paris


Bless me, pages,
for I have not penned
and it has been several months
since my last confession.
I lack the paper
to summarize concisely
as the pen-born word
must be writ precisely.
If this ink runs,
my hand is unsteady.
My apologies,
I have put faith in armadas
to bring Helen home
while prayer-lighting
straw gods up in slow effigies
and my hands have
benedictioned themselves until weary.

Bless me, pages,
for I have now penned
and it had been several months
since my last confession.
I prayed at your altar
and recited your hymns,
crafted cursive letters
birthed by Seraphim.
I spun tales towards the heavens
and made deals with below
while awaiting armadas
with Helen in tow.

~~~

Adam “Bucho” Rodenberger is a 33 year old writer from Kansas City living in San Francisco. He has been writing off and on since 1995, but consistently since 2004. He holds dual Bachelor’s degrees in Philosophy & Creative Writing and completed his MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco in 2011.

He began as a poet, but soon moved to flash fiction and short stories, only turning to longer works of fiction once he arrived in San Francisco. He is currently working on five experimental novels in the magical realism and surrealism genres.

Among his publication credits are Red Pulp Underground, Alors, Et Tois, Gloom Cupboard (#15), Up The Staircase #1, and Santa Clara Review.

You can visit Bucho at Fists & Angles, Christs & Angels here.

Thanks to Bucho for his participation in the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.


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.

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Rob Ganson

Next up on the Tattooed Poets Project is Rob Ganson, who informs us "I am tattooed over 75% of my body with award winning ink by my friend Ron Stephens of Tattoo Alley in Ashland, Wisconsin."

Rob has sent us a plethora of tattoos, a sample of which follows:


"The back piece was Ron's interpretation on a  [Frank] Frazetta painting called 'The Moonmaid.' "


Next up is this portrait of Jim Morrison:


Rob says this tattoo of the self-proclaimed "Lizard King" was inspired by Morrison's introduction of poetry to the masses of the rock audience.

And, well,


 this homage to "Frank Zappa ... happened because, well, Zappa RULED!"

And just so we can pay tribute to other great figures in music, Rob also shared this portrait of the Rolling Stones' guitarist Keith Richards


and the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson:


All in all, quite a collection of music legends on Mr. Ganson's body!

As for a poem, Rob sent me several poems for submission and I chose this one:

Echoes 13

“I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.” ― Arthur Rimbaud

What use a poet
but to hurl language
like a spear, to
sear the eye
of the
reader?

And you, dear reader -
plagued by open eyes -
must bear the brunt
of moments -
blunt trauma -
served like
songs.

I unfurl burly invective
best left to nightmare
to make jejune
spirits swoon
forever,

and as the world churns
absent these nightmares
the echoes fall -
moments caught
in poet's leaves
freeze like
Coleridge's
window.

~~~

Rob Ganson is a poet from the shore of Lake Superior. He has been published in three volumes of poetry, Float like a Butterfly, Sing like a Tree, Follow the Clear River Down, and A Storm of Horses, as well as in numerous anthologies and journals. He tends to write on themes of nature and the human condition.


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

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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: Andrea England

Our next tattooed poet is Andrea England, who submitted this photo of her tattoo:


Andrea explains:
"In 2001, I was able to take a trip to Ireland, the place of my mother’s ancestry, a place that she regretted never having visited. When I returned from Ireland I decided to tattoo her maiden initials on my arm in the original Celtic font used in The Book of Kells; CFM stands for Catherine Fallon McGinnis.

Chameleon in Harvard Square was my choice shop. The funny part is I had a difficult time convincing the artist to work on the inside of my arm. He kept asking me, 'Are you sure you want it there? You aren’t going to be able to hide it. Are you sure you don’t want a smaller font?' After some heckling, he gave me what I wanted. I take pride that she is there, and can’t hide from me or the world."
Here is one of Andrea's poems:

Discourse of Bric-a-brac

Insomnia in a twin bed,
the screech of brakes before
inevitable. Like the stray dog
gigolo, tags intact, jangling,
neighbors clamoring over each.
Who locked whom out. Get out.
Last time. The woo before sex, the sex,
the prayer you will drift asleep first
and the skateboard wheel as it fills each rut
in the walk just before the little boy falls.

Oklahoma City, the morning after
snow when you’ve only thin sandals.
That cold burning you thought you could
control by sleeping in separate beds,
stingray on the beach, insides pecked out,
still breathing and that sad miracle.
It’s disregarding the phone at 4am,
the trill of it or the painter in the dream
when he whispers, You can open your mouth
if you want to. This indecision.

Because your roommate would kill the spiders
behind the blinds, because the dishes in the sink
are desire and desire clutter.
Because in the sixth grade you wore
deodorant but no scent, underwear in the shower,
and watched the cool kids kiss formulas
out of each other after school. It’s because
by Darwin’s calculations we’re still here
surviving, fit to love best uneven,
even when there’s no love left.

~ ~ ~

Andrea England is a student, a mother, poet, and teacher, who resides in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming in, Passages North, Cutthroat Magazine, The DMQ Review, RHINO, and others. Dogs and cold, snowy winters are also worth mentioning as objects of her affection.

Thanks to Andrea for sharing her work with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Karrie Waarala

Our next tattooed poet is Karrie Waarala, who chose to share this stunning tattoo:

Located on her upper right arm, Karrie explained the origin of this art:

“This tattoo is a painting by my favorite artist, Franz Marc, whose career full of bold, colorful animals was cut far too short by his death in World War I. I had known I wanted a Marc tattoo for some time and had been shopping around for the right artist to do the work. I was getting a variety of unsatisfactory answers to my queries until I brought the design to Matt Hessler, who owns XS Tattoo in Rochester, MI. He knows art, liked the project, and he's done all of my work since.”
The painting replicated in the tattoo is called “The Tiger” and dates to 1912, one hundred years ago.

As Karrie shared this tattoo, she chose the following poem, which originally appeared in Arsenic Lobster:

For Franz Marc, on the Occasion of His Thirty-Sixth Birthday
           (February 8, 1880 – March 4, 1916, Verdun)

Was it a day like the crush of all days,

soot and stink smearing hours into each other,
death marching on spindly legs across trenches,
palette reduced to churned mud, choked sky,
crusted blood on gunmetal.

Did you steal any slaughter moments,
borrow butcher’s pigments long enough
to catch war’s angry tigers, pour them
haphazard into kaleidoscopes,
or push the peasant heft of draft horses
deftly through sharp prism angles.

Did any of your singed nape hairs stir
hint at the slow whistle of incoming days,
head bursting into spray of colors
thrumming with life as your canvases,
while orders flapped on insufficient wings
declaring you too vital to be ground into France.

Did you hear the animals weep?


~ ~ ~

Karrie Waarala holds an MFA from the Stonecoast Program at University of Southern Maine and is a teaching artist at The Rooster Moans poetry cooperative. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in journals such as Iron Horse Literary Review, PANK, The Collagist, Arsenic Lobster, and Radius. In addition to a Pushcart Prize nomination for her poetry, Karrie has received critical acclaim for her one-woman show, LONG GONE: A Poetry Sideshow, which is based on her collection of poems about the circus. She really wishes she could tame tigers and swallow swords. 
Thanks again to Karrie for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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.

Monday, April 2, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Eric Morago

This morning's tattooed poet is Eric Morago, who shares these lines of verse from his forearm:


I am a BIG Charles Bukowski fan, so I immediately recognized these lines ("what matters most / is how you / walk through the / fire") when I saw the photo.
Eric explains:
"The tattoo is taken from a the title of a collection of poems 
by Charles Bukowski. 
 I got [the tattoo] over Thanksgiving break at a local tattoo shop (Body Art Tattoo) in my hometown of Whittier, CA during my first semester of grad school.  I had just finished grading a bunch of papers as well as writing my own for a class and was just overwhelmed by what the next two years had in store for me that I wanted to do something commemorate the struggle ahead.  So that when all was said and done, M.F.A in hand, there was also tangible proof (besides a piece of paper) for what I had I succeeded in obtaining.  And the words would be a damn good reminder on those occasions where papers and grading and thesis deadlines loomed in the distance." 
By way of poetry, Eric offers up this tattoo-related gem:

ENTANGLED

A beautiful portrait of destruction,
her back is tattooed from shoulder
to shoulder—a giant octopus tears
boats apart with unworldly tendrils.
This turns me on.  I am a prepubescent
again thinking I’ve found ambrosia
between the pages of Victoria’s Secret
catalogues.  I get dizzy, lost in fantasy.
How though its body is submerged
in murky water, hidden by shading,
I believe the monster is winking at me.
I sit, imagine freckles into tiny frenzied
sailors jumping ship into the dark of her
skin, sinking down spine’s curve,
drowning, or falling into the creature’s
waiting, open-beaked mouth.  I would
never tell her any of this, of course.
Better she stay in the peep, a shadowy
figure of myth.  And like a yarn-spinning
seadog swearing by fantastical beasts—
all tentacles, sharp snouted and snarl
toothed—I too am ensnared, imagination
entangled in the suction-cupped arms
of wanting.  It is all I can do to fight,
struggle being pulled under an inky
veil where our eyes can clearly meet,
where any and all mystique is gone.

~ ~ ~
Eric Morago is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet who believes performance carries as much importance on the page, as it does off. Currently Eric is an an associate reviewer for Poetix.net, poet-in-residence with California WorkforceAssociation, and teaches workshops for Red Hen Press’ Writing in the Schools program. 


His first full length collection of poetry and prose entitled, What We Ache For, is available from Moon Tide Press. Eric holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach and lives to write in Whittier, CA.

Thanks to Eric for sharing his poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!


This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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.

Sunday, April 1, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project: Noelle Kocot

We are launching this, our fourth year of celebrating tattooed poets for National Poetry Month, with the work of an amazingly talented writer, Noelle Kocot. I had first approached Noelle about participating last year, but it never came to fruition.This year, however, we were able to pull it together.

First, here's a glimpse of Noelle's tattoo:


As tattoos go, this is fairly simple and straight forward. It's the name "Damon," but it's not just any name.


Damon Tomblin  was Noelle's husband, who died on March 10, 2004. She had his name memorialized in December, later that year. This is her only tattoo.  I'd point you to this page from dewclaw journal to read a little more from Noelle about Damon, and hear a few movements from a sonata Damon composed.

Noelle offered us the following poem, which originally appeared in Tin House, and was later included in her book Sunny Wednesday:

12th Wedding Anniversary

Jailed and decreased, my doughnuts rise.
 Have a feather, don’t ask why,
 There is a Coney Island in my eye.
 Hair and plaid rabbits,
 Anniversal belief is the strongest to go
 Over a listless sky, a prevenient frost.
 Let’s go to the Cloisters
 And all you can eat sushi
 My tattoo should be healed now.
 Dear, you are a norming legend in the kitty-star.
 I eat for two, on the evening of
 We knew each other before our faces and our names.
~ ~ ~

Noelle Kocot is the author of five full-length collections of poetry, including most recently, The Bigger World (Wave Books, 2011) and Sunny Wednesday ( Wave Books, 2009). She has also recently published a limited-edition collection of translations of the poems of Tristan Corbière, as Poet By Default ( Wave Books, 2011). Kocot has received numerous honors for her poetry, including a NEA fellowship and inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2001 and 2011.


Thanks to Noelle for her contribution, and helping us launch this, our fourth year of the Tattooed Poets Project!



This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. Photos courtesy of Noelle Kocot. Poem reprinted with the author's permission.


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.

Saturday, March 31, 2012

The Tattooed Poets Project, Volume 4

It seems incredible to me that this April, in 2012, we’ll be celebrating National Poetry Month on Tattoosday for the fourth year in a row, by showcasing the tattoos of poets. Not necessarily literary tattoos, but tattoos of the literary.

When the idea first struck me in early 2009, I didn’t know if a) it would work, and b) if I would be able to pull it off. Every year, somehow, I manage to execute at least thirty days of inked poets, and, with apologies to Lennon/McCartney, I get by with a little help from my friends.

2012 is slightly different. Faced with a big family event in February, I got an early start and went from worrying about not filling the calendar to the heretofore unimaginable - too many contributions? Someone posted the call for submissions on a UK writer’s board, and I was flooded with e-mails offering up their poetry and ink. I started - gasp!- to decline inquiries.

The end result is a month packed with tattooed poets. There will be days with double posts so, if you are in the habit of checking in daily, you may want to visit back in the evenings, as well, so as not to miss anyone. Of course, I always point people to the Tattooed Poets Project Index (www.tattooedpoets.com) to get the complete rundown.

Thanks for checking in, and happy national poetry month!

Monday, March 26, 2012

RoBear Shares a Pin-Up

A familiar face passed me in Penn Station a couple weeks back and I jumped at the opportunity to talk to him - it was RoBear, from the TLC series NY Ink.

For those of you not familiar with the show, RoBear is the floor manager at Wooster Street Social Club, the setting for the show.

I first encountered RoBear last May, when I was one of the lucky people selected to take part in "Roosterfest," a fundraiser segment of episode seven on season one. $50 rooster tattoos were on order and I got, in my opinion, the best one - from Megan Massacre. I documented the experience here.

So, here I was, talking to RoBear in Penn Station and, well, I had to ask, would he mind sharing one of his tattoos?

Much to my happiness, he was game and, after a moment of thought, rolled up his right pant leg to reveal this tattoo:


RoBear explained that the pin-up is based on his long-time friend Natascha de los Angeles, and he elaborated by e-mail:

"I got the tattoo to commemorate my friendship to the girl who named me Robear when I was sixteen. We met at a BIGLNY (Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian NY) youth group back in the day at the Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center on West 13th Street and right after meeting she said I was 'cute, a little furry and that she was going to call me Robear.' It totally stuck and she has never one since called me by my birth name, which is Robert.

So, after getting the job on NY INK, since the name was so catchy, I wanted to thank [Natascha] and celebrate our friendship that has spanned almost 20 years now ... my artist, Tony Silva of High Roller Tattoo in NY, and I came up with this pinup specifically for her. [Natascha] is a pastry artist and chef in Manhattan, so I did the bakers hat, apron and her holding one of her own cakes she has made. Her website is Artesenal Sweets ... She is a constant inspiration and muse for me and all I do with my fashion, interior design and culinary arts, since she emcompasses everything that is beautiful and creative to me. A truly unqiue and special woman that will be in my life forever."

RoBear was also kind enough to send a crisper photo of the tattoo

Pin-Up by Tony Silva, Photo Courtesy of RoBear
and a picture of him with Natascha for reference below: 
Natascha de los Angeles & RoBear, photo courtesy of RoBear
I want to thank RoBear for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday. It's obviously a piece with a lot of  deep personal meaning, and he was kind enough not only to let me take a photo in Penn Station, but also to send along more pictures and give me a complete back story.

You can catch RoBear on repeats of NY Ink on TLC. Still no word on whether the show will be picked up for a third season. You can also become a fan of RoBear on his Facebook fan page here.

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday.

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.