Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Poetry. Show all posts
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Friday, November 11, 2011
Brian's Literary Chest Tattoo
The weather here in New York has been turning autumnal and visible tattoos have been disappearing from the streets, but fear not, Readers, we still have material to get us through the end of the year, thanks to a backlog of photos from the summer!
Case in point is this tattoo from Brian:
I met Brian at a drugstore in Bay Ridge, back in the beginning of August. He told me he had just started working as an apprentice at A-List Industry Tattoos, a few blocks away.
At the time, Brian had seven tattoos, including this chest piece, which is comprised of two parts.
The top section reads "Incomplete - Imperfect" and is an allusion to lines from Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club:
The bottom section of the tattoo features a banner that reads "Death steals everything but out stories."
Brian explained that he took this to mean that "what outlives us is the memories we have, the stories we have".
It's actually the final line in a short poem by Jim Harrison:
Thanks to Brian for sharing his ink with us here on Tattoosday!
Case in point is this tattoo from Brian:
I met Brian at a drugstore in Bay Ridge, back in the beginning of August. He told me he had just started working as an apprentice at A-List Industry Tattoos, a few blocks away.
At the time, Brian had seven tattoos, including this chest piece, which is comprised of two parts.
The top section reads "Incomplete - Imperfect" and is an allusion to lines from Chuck Palahniuk's novel Fight Club:
"May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. Deliver me, Tyler, from being perfect and complete."Brian credited this piece to Paul Ilardi, the owner at Monster Tattoos on Staten Island.
The bottom section of the tattoo features a banner that reads "Death steals everything but out stories."
Brian explained that he took this to mean that "what outlives us is the memories we have, the stories we have".
It's actually the final line in a short poem by Jim Harrison:
Brian credited this part of the tattoo to Cesar at Bullseye Tattoos, also on Staten Island.Larson's Holstein Bull
Death waits inside us for a door to open.
Death is patient as a dead cat.
Death is a doorknob made of flesh.
Death is that angelic farm girl
gored by the bull on her way home
from school, crossing the pasture
for a shortcut. In the seventh grade
she couldn't read or write. She wasn't a virgin.
She was "simpleminded," we all said.
It was May, a time of lilacs and shooting stars.
She's lived in my memory for sixty years.
Death steals everything except our stories..
Thanks to Brian for sharing his ink with us here on Tattoosday!
This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday, with the exception of "Larson's Holstein Bull" by Jim Harrison from In Search of Small Gods. © Copper Canyon Press, 2009.
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.
Friday, October 7, 2011
Pretty.Tough
Wearing: H&M Dress, DIY Studded leopard print boots, United Colours of Benetton Shirt, Topshop choker, Miss Selfridges leather Jacket, F+F snood, thrifted bag.
I am so excited to have found this beautiful park near my house, it is so beautiful with all the different coloured leaves on the ground. I can definitely say this was the last day for wearing thin tights, I am going to go invest in some super thick warm ones!!
I wanted to toughen up this super feminine floaty dress so decided on strong military accents like the shirt and leather Jacket, I though the leopard print also added some edge! What do you think?
My sister wrote this poem especially for this post. She is only 16 and super talented at poetry. I wouldn't even now where to begin! Thank you Lo <3
Mother Tree
Mother Tree
Until thy last breathe,
Shall I cling to thee,
No hallowing autumn gust,
Shall release thee from me.
Until the final swallow hath flown the nest,
Thus every gaggle swiftly eastwards bound
I shall hold thee proudly,
Far above the lofty ground.
Let no mother Earth misty breathe
Tear thee from thy twisted hand
And transport thee, from me
To a far flung frosty land.
Oh, Autumn child,
Oh orange babe o’ mine,
High upon my gentle grasp
Thou shall remain divine
But if, by chance, thou shall fall,
To the damp embrace of dewy dawn,
Above thee, i shall forever stand,
And in my bareness mourn.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Emma's Monarchs, and a Spalsh of Verlaine
At the end of July, a young woman named Emma missed her train in Penn Station and had some time to kill. Her wait was shortened when I chanced upon her and asked about this lovely tattoo she had going on her left arm:
She explained the origins of this wonderful body art:
The left wrist reads, "Les roses étaient toutes rouges et les lierres étaient tout noirs" which translates to "The roses were all red and ivy were all black."
The right wrist reads, "Voici des fruits, des fleurs, des feuilles et des branches" which translates to "Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches."
She explained the origins of this wonderful body art:
"I knew that I wanted a monarch. And I knew that I wanted it on my arm. And I knew that I wanted it coming out of a chrysalis ... I did a lot of research online and ... didn’t know who I wanted to get it done by and was just in San Diego for the day with my cousin. Pacific Beach, actually, and was ... shopping in Pacific Beach and walked into a tattoo parlor, just like 'Oh, let’s go look at tattoo parlors!' and was flipping through all the catalogs and it was like dragon, dragon, dragon. Samurai guy, samurai guy, samurai guy. And then opened one and it was just all these amazing beautiful naturescapes and just amazing detail and I immediately, right there was like, 'whoever this is, I want this person to do my tattoo'. And they were like, 'Hold on. She’s in the back' … her name is Rebecca Min and I basically came to her with the idea and was like, 'You’re the artist, so I want it hanging from a dead branch. I want the branch to be black and gray and I love monarchs.'
I have always loved monarchs for my whole life from when I was three. That’s one of my earliest memories, I found a monarch caterpillar with my great aunt and took it home from Wisconsin to, at the time, Chicago, in a jar with some milkweed and watched it spin a chrysalis and then hatch out of the chrysalis and then let it go and ever since then I’ve just loved monarchs …they’ve reminded me of the older women in my family, my grandmother, my great aunt.It’s still a work in progress and she combined all these pictures, she put them together and I knew that I wanted the chrysalis to be empty, like it had just come out of the chrysalis, like a rebirth sort of thing and we both had the idea to make it translucent so that you could see the branch through the chrysalis...We’ve been working on it for over a year and a half now, just bits and pieces , my longest session was three and a half hours and I had the idea to do a whole swarm from different perspectives and once we have all of those one, she’s going to pick a light source from one direction and do shadows….and she’s gonna do moss on the branches, a white lichen."
The shop where Emma began to work with Rebecca Min was Chronic Tattoo. Emma says Rebecca has moved on to Eden Tattoo, although she is still listed as an artist on the Chronic website.
Emma also has these tattoos on her wrists:
The left wrist reads, "Les roses étaient toutes rouges et les lierres étaient tout noirs" which translates to "The roses were all red and ivy were all black."
The right wrist reads, "Voici des fruits, des fleurs, des feuilles et des branches" which translates to "Here are fruits, flowers, leaves and branches."
Emma elaborates:
They are the first two lines of the last two songs in a set called "Aria T'oublie" by Claude Debussy. The poetry is by Paul Verlaine. I was a classical voice major in college and I wanted to do the set for my senior recital and I am obviously not your normal opera singer and my voice teacher said, 'Okay, that’s fine you can do the set, except for the last two songs. They’re too hard for you.' And I said, 'Fuck you.' And I took a year off and did nothing but practice and did lessons and studied and performed the set and was, too my knowledge, the first undergraduate ever to perform the set in its entirety. And so this was my badge of honor. Now seven year later, eight years later and until I’m in my eighties, I can look down and read these first two lines and remember every single word in French to both of these songs.
A hearty thanks to Emma for sharing these cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!I was in West Hollywood, I was 23 and had 50 bucks and was like 'who can do this for really cheap?' and I don’t remember what his name was but I do know that at the time he had a sprained wrist and he was like 'I’ll do it. I’ll do it cheap. But I can’t believe you’re making me tattoo in a foreign language, upside down, with a sprained wrist.'
This entry is ©2011 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.
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