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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!

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!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

BACK AT IT.

My boy Adrian was back at the studio to keep adding on his sleeve with 3 roses symbolising the members of his familly. Have a look

The next day after geting out of the marine corp Anthony went straight up for the hand shot... Check it out

Sneak posting, shhhhh...

Happy Sunday y'all!
We're having an actual day off, so i shouldn't even be doing this (mmm, forbidden blogging), but i just wanted to let you know (in case you hadn't seen it already) that Allan has posted pictures from the exhibition on his blog!
Yes, so go check that out!

Also, a tattoo by Uncle Allan, just because i care

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:

12^th 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!