Day 11 Tattoo

 

Tattoo - Wallace Stevens

The light is like a spider.

It crawls over the water.

It crawls over the edges of the snow.

It crawls under your eyelids

And spreads its webs there-

Its two webs.

The webs of your eyes

Are fastened

To the flesh and bones of you

As to rafters or grass.

There are filaments of your eyes

On the surface of the water

And in the edges of the snow.

And similar to this, I love the tattoo that the shadows of leaves in summer create on the ground: 

 

Tattoo ~ a mark of freedom, free spirit design, a stamp/statement of individualism, a moment of fleeting impetuosity forever captured in ink...

A tattoo can be many things, metaphorically speaking. A mark of some kind, one you maybe regret, but have to learn to live with. or a declaration of personal intent, a peekaboo glimpse of personality, a permanent accessory that proclaims who you are.


Tattoo 

(for World Suicide Prevention Day)

You didn't ask for it,
this inscribed dark matter.
Its ink runs in you, black,
night after night.

But the world will return soon
with its story of colours.
Shadows only make
for temporary tattoos.





Tattoo 

Your love has etched itself in my life
like a tattoo
I never wanted;

pierced my heart
in a painful flair
of permanence

I wasn't ready for.
At first it looked
like the trembling shadow 

leaves cast on sunny ground -
arabesque intense truth. 
Now, it's a wizened scribble,

deep dark scar tissue
of how keenly I felt,
how deeply I lost.

When I love, I feel its needle sting.
When I write, I use its ink. 

 ***

Tattoo Ideas

I've always wanted a blue butterfly on my wrist
to flick and flicker should life get dull and flat.
The colour of creativity, the spark of a whim
to carry as a totem, blue and deep as a dream.

Or a swallow with outstretched wings -
visual footnote stamp of what it means
to be free, to swoop and glide through days,
an inked charm against being tied down in any way. 

Or in eloquent script, a favourite quote noted, 
a spiral of words to invoke haughty heed,
a spell realised as the letters bleed into skin.
What's on the inside clearly marked from without. 

(You see why temporary just won't do.)

 


Poems (c) Siobhán Mc Laughlin