Eugenia and A Letter (Tattooed Poet of the Week)

Our tattooed poet of the week is Eugenia:

Eugenia explains:

"I had been thinking for some years about getting a tattoo using sacred text of some kind. I believe it is the path of the poet to serve as an alchemist of language, so I felt myself drawn as a writer more toward a language-based tattoo rather than a strictly art-based one. I was thumbing through a book by John Stevens entitled Sacred Calligraphy of the East, when I saw the Siddhaṃ letter A, and I knew I had found my tattoo. Siddhaṃ is the name of a script used for writing Sanskrit during the period ca 600-1200 CE, and is descended from Brahmi and Gupta script. Of my particular seed syllable the text states:

'A is the first and most important of the Siddhaṃ characters. It is the source of all vowels and consonants; it includes and is included in every sound produced by human beings. Hence, in both a physical and spiritual sense it is the origin of all elements. It is the seed character of Mahavairocana (Dainichi Nyorai), the supreme Buddha who manifests the unity of all phenomena. A is uncreated, the primordial form of existence.'

I received my tattoo by a young man working at Lovedog Tattoo in Soquel, California in 2000."

Eugenia sent us the following poem, which said her "relates best to this tattoo [and] is a poem of transformation, with images that are Buddhist in nature ... previously published in Chiron Review.


Shing*


I used to believe I was worthless
repeated mantras to turn my blood black
my skin lusterless

I came to believe in darkness
the tumbling down to truth

a silver pearl at the center of each battered heart

I wanted to believe in one God
Ahimsa
Atman
the great returning after death


I still believe the world is round
a black hole
denser than Pound’s Cantos
too heavy for its own fortunes

still
now

I watch the stars grow heavy with light
multiply into twos and fours
a million butter lamps spilling over

golden fish throw their marks
across a thousand seas
gilding stagnant pools in their wake

magpies gather on moonlit nights
chanting their secret
oracular tomes

a lotus blossom blooms in the mire
pulling itself from Cimmerian darkness
into the shing of this pendent world


*“Shing”: Tibetan for “field,” “good place,” or “realm,” and sometimes refers to a Buddha’s paradise.

~ ~ ~

Eugenia lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in MonkeyBicycle, Cascadia Review, The Gambler Magazine, The Found Poetry Review, Literary Orphans and elsewhere. A chapbook of her prose poems, Pamyat Celo/Memory Village, was published in 2007. She is also an analog photographer and loves working with Mod Podge.

Thanks to Eugenia for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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.

Lexy’s Chrysanthemum Sprouts from a Poem

I was leaving my office building last week on Broad Street, when a woman named Lexy walked by with this great thigh tattoo:

I caught up to her, introduced myself and she agreed to share her ink with us here.

This piece was done by Alejandro Lopez, who is based in Pasadena, California, but works out of Addiction NYC when he's in the Big Apple.

When I asked her if she originally went to Alejandro for the chrysanthemum, she said that actually, she
had gone to him for this tattoo on her ribs:

“This is a poem,” she explained, “and I told [Alejandro] the meaning of the poem, and he reached out
to me and said, You know, I really like the poem, it resonated with me and he asked if he could expand
on it … And we sat down and talked about what the meaning was for me and he created this piece [the
chrysanthemum] based on what it meant to me.”

She indicated that the poem is Korean in origin, and it is in her grandmother’s handwriting. It turns
out that Lexy’s grandma was a professional calligrapher in Korea, and the red boxes are actual
representations of her grandparent’s pen names, or signatures, in Korean. How cool is that?

She elaborated a little more on the meaning of the poem:

“The poem itself is talking about whether you live or die as a nameless wildflower or a famous rose, it’s up to you, so you basically take control of your destiny, but [should] also have compassion for those who have no control … it also says something about the day that you’re born is the day that you die.”

Lexy also told me she was born in the year of the snake, which is why she has a cobra tattoo. I didn't think much of it at the time, as I didn't see a snake here.

When I was writing up this post, however, and looked at Alejandro's Instagram page, it all made sense. After getting his permission, along with Lexy's, I am happy to share the whole work-in-progress which, for obvious reasons, I never saw on Broad Street:

Photo Courtesy of Alejandro P. Lopez via http://instagram.com/alejandropaivalopez

Thanks to Lexy for sharing her wonderful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! Thanks, as well, to Alejandro Lopez for sharing his Instagram collage so we could see his work in its full scope.

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website 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: Khadija Anderson

Our next tattooed poet, Khadija Anderson, expressed an interest in our Tattooed Poets Project last year, so we're happy we were able to finalize her contribution for 2013.

Noting "it was hard to choose since I love all my 7 tattoos!" Khadija sent us this photo:

Khadija tells us:

"My tattoo is Arabic calligraphy of a verse from the Qur'an (9:40), " laa ta'hazen fa innah Allaha maana". The translation is 'Don't give up hope, Allah is with us.' I chose this design because the calligraphy is gorgeous, I love the humanitarian message of the verse, and I like to show that I am a Muslim in a non-traditional way. A friend of mine, Russell Moore, did the tattoo in my living room in Los Angeles in 2008 shortly after I moved back to LA. It was the 5th of my 7 tattoos."

It seems appropriate that Khadija sent us a poem, as well, that is related to her faith:

Today for Jury Duty I decide to wear the Hijab

for the first time in 5 years
except to pray
I put it on and felt
a familiar feeling

People stared
since white skin blue eyes
and black skinny jeans
are not what most people imagine
a good Muslim would have on
under a scarf

One man stared furiously
I held my tongue
and smiled sweetly
like the good Muslim
that I am

~ ~ ~

Khadija Anderson returned in 2008 to her native Los Angeles after 18 years exile in Seattle. Khadija's poetry has been published in Pale House, Unfettered Verse, Washington Poets Association's online whispers & [Shouts], CommonLine Project, Qarrtsiluni, Gutter Eloquence, Killpoet, wheelhouse 9, and many other online and print journals. Khadija was a 2009 Pushcart Prize Nominee and she holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her first book of poetry, History of Butoh, was published in 2012 by Writ Large Press. You can learn more about her at: http://khadijaanderson.com.

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

This entry is ©2013 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.