Chris Caruso on The Tattooed Poets Project

Today's tattooed poet is Chris Caruso, who shared his back:

Chris tells us:

"The artist who did this piece was Everett Magie out of Alien Ink Tattoos (@alieninktattoosnj). The back piece itself is a cover up. Previously my back had an assortment of tattoos that in my 20’s I believed were a good idea. Some of the gems were a Chaos Cross tramp stamp and a bar code. When I begin the cover up, I wanted to reflect the change in my world view since my twenties. I have moved away from the angst-ridden belief that everything was chaos and that humans were nothing more than cogs in a callous world. I wanted to instead focus on a more spiritual path, one filled with optimism. While the piece is still in process the main components are there: The Buddha sitting on a lotus, a Buddha face watching my back, and the beginnings of temple pillars."

In addition, Chris also sent us the following poem:

Dearest Picture Frame,

I wonder how a forest will look when it turns to stone, aged by lack of human hands. If only I could choose the time and day, I become petrified flesh. Perhaps it is better to molt a trail of discarded pasts behind. Frame them a pinned anthropology of the self. Each moment mounted on the wall, stored in desk draws like beheaded wasps and fractured shells of beetles. Come stranger enter into me, but only the husks I was.  

This is easier than looking in eyes and explaining why. Or describing the notes tacked to walls of how a past me believed a future me should be.

Fill this shell with stories and watch how it breathes. Fill this shell with movements and it will seem to touch and offer a hand in need.

I prefer not to remember how old skin merely seeds the growth beneath.   

~ ~ ~

Chris Caruso earned MFA’s in Creative Writing from Boise State University and Rutgers University Newark. His poems appear in online and print journals. He’s lived in several states and just moved back to New Jersey after seven years in Boise, ID. Chris hopes to eventually live in a small cottage with a koi pond in Oregon.

Thanks to Chris for sharing his tattoos and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2019 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.net 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.

Natalie, Fire, Lotus

I met Natalie last summer at the Cortlandt Street subway station. I noticed she had these cool little tattoos on the backs of her legs:

The fire on the left leg is credited to artist Sarah Gaugler (@sarahgaugler) from Snow Tattoo in Manhattan and the lotus on the right is by Hugo Andres (@xallitic_tattoos) from  Xallitic Tattoos in Bushwick.

Natalie explained that her tattoos are grounded in yogic philosophies:

"[The lotus] is all about the attachment to negativity and staying grounded ... the lotus flower is at the bottom of the water and when they come up every morning out of the water, they break free of all the dirt and often live in very swampy areas ... [The fire represents] a light that's burning inside ... in the yogic philosophy ... you pay attention to your light and do things and move in a way that brightens your light ... it's a reminder to focus on my light and meditate more ... also, passion, the fire inside, heat, essentially."

Thanks to Natalie for sharing these awesome tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2019 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.

Lynne DeSilva-Johnson's Body of Work on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our final tattooed poet in April is Lynne DeSilva-Johnson.

I've been talking to Lynne about contributing for over four years, and I finally met her last summer at the annual NYC Poetry Festival on Governor's Island.

Here are some of Lynne's tattoos:

Lynne explains:

"The hand tattoos are from 2007. On my left hand is an eye, radiating out -- the all seeing eye combined with the classic symbolism of eye-in-hand, familiar via the Hamsa in particular, and ancient to both Jews and Arabs in the middle east. The all seeing eye, unfortunately connecting us too frequently to illuminati or other ridiculousness, is actually an ancient esoteric visual symbolizing divine light and our connection to it as divine beings. It is consistent in all ancient religions/sacred imagery, predating organized religion but carrying into all faiths. On the right hand is a human heart, similarly radiant. In energy work and healing, it is believed that the left hand receives energy/is negatively charged, 'allows things to happen,' and that the right hand is positively charged/emits energy, 'makes things happen.' My hands symbolize (and stand as a constant reminder to me, and a point of public dialogue) that while we receive light and information via our minds eye/senses, that it must be translated in the body and find a home in the heart, that decisions and actions should come in through the eye but channel out, to the world, through the heart. In keeping with this, I used the following image, (ceremonial rattlesnake disk, found in Moundsville, Alabama) on the cover of my first chapbook, Ground. (2012)"

Lynne also gave us a view of her body of work:

Lynne elaborates:

"All the tattoos you see are from the same artist! Alex Sherker. He is amazing. You can find him at Wizard Mountain Tattoo, and often as a visiting artist at shops all over the US, and NZ. Oh wait, not the split star on the wrists...  They're from around 2004 - and were done at Flyrite, 3 blocks from my childhood home and 1 block from my family's old house in Brooklyn. My old partner (now deceased) had the same split stars. They were slightly altered in scale for our different wrists but you couldn't tell when we put them together. The thinking was that you are never a half -- you are always a whole by yourself (complete your own star), but when you join in partnership with another person, you create a new whole. The totally anti-ownership/tagging version of a relationship tattoo. We always said that our future partners, or children, or friends could in fact also get the same piece (still a possibility!) to indicate the new wholes created with our knowing and sharing with each other.

On my back, in the plaque area, in white (hard to see, this tattoo is pretty old at this point) is a quote from Sartre, in French, but which translates to 'have no illusions and do only what you can' -- a bit of a mantra of sorts for many years about balance and duality in life and work , which I always took to mean, boiled down, 'give yourself a break while kicking your own ass.' I got this as I was in a bit of a divorce with the illusions I'd had about academia and the relationship of disciplinary scholarship to ontology and enlightenment, as well as to a necessary distancing from the former partner, who battled opiate and alcohol addictions. It was a bittersweet reclaiming the core of my intentions/desires, as well as a leaving behind a lot of what I thought my life would hold. The female figures are not angels, a common confusion, but rather are from two paintings of Alphonse Mucha -- the left is from his panel representing 'the arts,' this figure being 'Dance' (from 1898) and the right representing 'spring,' from another panel painting of the seasons. I was always very entranced by art nouveau, its marriage of biological/botanical forms and the new technologies of the modern moment -- steel and glass and concrete. As with most back tattoos, and the ceiling of the UN, this is perennially unfinished -- there was a whole plan for botanical and architectural elements surrounding what you see now...!

Somewhere, on the neck, near the nautical star, on a ribbon it also reads 'to thine own self be true,' gotten the day I left a job I felt I had shrunk down and diminished myself to stay at -- a reminder to never do that again (and, by and large, I've kept to that promise!)
On my biceps are tattoos for my daughter, Beckett -- Love Always, on my right, Beckett Rose, on my left. From 2010. My daughter was born in February 2010, conceived manually in a room by myself, the daughter of me and a gay couple, Matthew and Dan, long time friends of a good friend of mine. She was adopted by them fully (the only legal option) in May of 2010. On the day of her adoption I sat for 8 or more hours in Carnegie Hall listening to the Dalai Lama talk about the Bodhisattva path, non attachment, duality, and enlightenment, what I seek here in every way. I do not believe that this legal document controls or defines our relationship, and I continue to be very much her 'Mama Lynne,' a constant part in her life. These tattoos are a reminder for me that I carry her with me every day, and that love is never about ownership or title, love is never about volume of time but quality of that time, of intention and attention and consciousness and being a model for her of the possibilities of family, parenthood, self-hood. 

Shoulders, most recent, are my design in collaboration with Alex - lotus based epaulets, traditionally a military symbol, here transformed with lotus -- symbol of peace, enlightenment, and our path through the mud into bloom -- I call them my spirit warrior epaulets, because indeed I am fighting a battle everyday here, not only of my own but in my community, humbly hoping to improve this place." 

Lynne also shared the following poem:

NOVENA

two swing in unison, one opposing;

the sun's warmth a surprise

amongst fallen leaves, so that

every arm is graced by

unnecessary jacket, armor

for what we thought was coming.

their dog will not pose

for the camera, her every hair on its end,

her nose an antenna for the infinite scents

alit on the wind, on whispers

from the sky's million and one mouths.

look up: that blue is bigger

than anything you can imagine.

why can you feel this wind

on your face, why hear the insistent

caw of unseen birds? the grace

of these mathematics, demurring

behind the face of the mundane --

this is divinity.

I'll write this poem whenever I can,

over and over again

until I die

and what I see before me

will never grow old, will

never cease to be

miracle.

~ ~ ~

Lynne DeSilva-Johnson is a willful subject feminist killjoy queer official-narrative battler making her way through image, text, and code in the world, currently stationed in Brooklyn, NY. She runs the self-hacking arts organization/press The Operating System, and is an Assistant Visiting Professor at Pratt Institute.

You can find her on the web in these various locales:

http://lynne-desilva-johnson.strikingly.com
http://theoperatingsystem.org
twitter.com/@onlywhatican
twitter.com/@the_OS_
instagram: @thetroublewithbartleby, @the_operating_system

You can also enjoy this recent interview with her: http://culturedesigners.com/the-operating-system-detournement-radical-documentation-with-lynne-desilva-johnson/

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

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading 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.

Natasha's Geisha

Last July, I met Natasha, who shared the work on both upper arms, including this stunning geisha:

The detail in this is amazing, including the back side of the arm:

Her other arm sports a lotus blossom and a koi:

Unfortunately, I lost the name of the artist responsible for this beautiful black and gray work.

Thanks to Natasha for sharing this amazing work with us here in Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2016 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 Buddha on Wall Street

Last week I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Cyrus, a visitor from Olso, Norway. He had this magnificent tattoo to share with us:

Cyrus got this at 1969 Tattoo, in Oslo, from a Thai artist working there named Noi Siamese III.

"I like the art, first of all," Cyrus told me, "and I think Buddhism is inspiring."

The quality of this work is astounding, from the beauty of the lotus at the bottom, to the distinct pop of the green leaves at the top, both serving to frame the great black and gray face of Buddha. It really was a pleasure to stumble upon a tattoo as lovely as this.

Thanks to Cyrus for sharing his inspiring tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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.

Tom Cloud's Colorful Ink (The Tattooed Poets Project)

The first tattooed poet of the week for June is Tom Cloud, who is not your typical poet that we generally see here on Tattoosday. Tom can't be found in the pages of literary magazines, but that doesn't disqualify him as a poet. And his tattoos are bright, colorful, and heavy with meaning.

I'll let Tom do all the heavy lifting in this post:

"My name is Tom Cloud and my wife and I own a store in Mountain View, Arkansas called For Mother Earth.

I am 60 years old and write poetry purely for pleasure and for emotional release. I am not published outside of a couple of forgotten vanity press books and an odd website or two.

When my Doctor saw my tats she asked if I was some kind of ' Hindu Sailor'? The truth is that I love Eastern Indian art and mythology. While I do not believe in the Gods as such, each symbolizes an important concept and that is why they were chosen as my tattoos.

The Krsna tat is on my left forearm and represents the Call back to Eternity, and the Peace of the Spirit. On the right forearm is Ganapati... or Ganesha... who is Overcomer of Obstacles and brings wisdom and learning.

On the ankles are anklets made up of lotus flowers, two with the OM inside to represent Everything and two with nothing inside to represent the Silence. They are joined by chains in Sanskrit that read OM SHANTI SHANTI SHANTI, a call to Peace and a reminder for me to walk each step in Peace.

The White Rose is on my left thumb and is for Die Weisse Rose, for the young people who published under that name in resistance to the rise of the Nazi Party and it's precepts and wars as a commitment to speak my Truth about such things in my own times.

All tattoos were done by Dessa Blackthorn, who owns Tattooz By Sassy in Mt. Home, Arkansas."

I really love these tattoos on Tom. He also sent us this poem:

Tao Walker

The Mountain’s so lonely,
that I have to come down…
wandering my way from
the peak to the town.

Through a maze of trails
that are never the same,
finding lost pilgrims,
who are looking for names…

sometimes guiding the pilgrims
toward where they need go, or
telling others they seek for
things I don’t know.

I try to walk quietly-
to learn what I see…
so not to shock Nature from
Her Great Reverie…

Then comes the outskirts, the
sprawling of town…
the bustle picks up, and
the hustle goes down!

Kaleidoscopic, the busy-ness!
It’s always a shock
to enter a Reality of
numbers, of clocks…

they all speak my language
all talking to me, but
I am buffeted by Purposes,
dazed by the Meanings I see…

indeed, Human RACE!
God’s Sacred Zoo!
I absorb this Reality as
equally True.

Then, I reach overload, and
must slip away…
redeemed in the calmness as
I accept my own Way…

at home on the pathways
that wind toward a Peak…
joining lone pilgrims
for a time, as they seek

some golden Grail,
some symbol of Tao
encouraging their searching for
that lost Sacred Cow,

before reaching a cross-road
where I pass them by, to
go my pathless Way
to my home in the sky…

~ ~ ~

Thanks to Tom Cloud for his contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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.

Mark's Sleeve by SkullSugar

Yesterday, we enjoyed Maria's work by Fidel "SkullSugar" Quiñones at Lucky 13 Tattoo n Norwich, Great Britain. If you missed the post, revisit it here.

I only bring it up because, when I met Maria, she was accompanied by Mark, who had a full sleeve that was the handicraft of SkullSugar.

Check it out:

Of course you have the koi, swimming up the arm for good luck, with a phoenix on the opposite side of the forearm.

Mark noted that he works for the fire service, so the phoenix is a nod to that fiery vocation.

Mark also indicated that the green and yellow behind the carp is a subtle nod to the team colors of his favorite football club, Norwich City. "I would never put football emblems," he explained, "so I have a little bit of colour...that's the only personal bit to it."

As for the genesis of the sleeve, starting up top, Mark added, "It started off as a cover-up....I like Japanese work so I just let my artist just do his thing, really... he came up with the idea of a geisha..."

The colors of the work, speckled with the occasional cherry blossom, are really quite bright and vibrant. I don't generally like to photograph full sleeves, because it's hard to do them justice in two-dimensional venue, but I was impressed by this work enough to make an exception. I think we're able to see how nice this work is.
Thanks to Mark for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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.

Ryan's Tattoos Represent the Duality of Human Existence

A couple weeks back on Broad Street, I ran into Ryan, who had two tattoos on either side of his calf.

I first noticed the back of the leg, which featured this image:

In explaining the tattoos he designed, Ryan, a chef, specified that "the mosquito represents the parasitic nature of man’s ego." He elaborated, "yup, sucking on, y’know the host, the earth."

Then there's this design on the front of the calf:

Ryan told me, "...on the front, a lotus flower, coming out of the earth with the sun rising, the hopeful sun rising future, the lotus flower representing the man’s spiritual potential." He added that "the front and back are the dualities of what we fight with."

He also shared this piece on his arm, noting that the kanji on the wrist was done first, and the rest of the tattoo was built around it:

Ryan explained:

"This was inspired by my favorite author’s book, JosephCampbell’s A Hero with a Thousand Faces and …it [the kanji] just says hero and then the reflection of it in the water, the faceless monk… it’s a representation of that book."

Ryan couldn't remember the exact name of the shop or the artist, so the work will have to remain uncredited, for the moment.

UPDATE: Ryan confirmed that the work was done by Joy at Twelve 28 Tattoo in New York City.

Thanks to Ryan for sharing his cool tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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.

Emily's Sleeve Seen Downtown

For many years, when I worked near Penn Station, I found that massive train nexus to be a great place to meet people with tattoos. Now that I employed near Wall Street, I'm beginning to feel that the area around Federal Hall is my new reliable spot to find Tattoosday subjects.

For example, earlier this week, I met Emily, who shared a couple sections of her right arm, including the top:

This image of Buddha, surrounded by snakes, is punctuated near the lower half of the arm with some color:

The flower is a lotus, which is commonly found along with Buddha imagery.

The sleeve is a lovely contrast of black and grey, with pops of color.

Emily credited this work to an artist in London named Nikole Lowe, owner of Good Times Tattoo.

When I asked her about the work, Emily said that there was no "big deep meaning" her tattoo. "I just love the image ... and the color," she told me, adding, "I think it's a beautiful piece of artwork"

Certainly no argument from me on that one!

Thanks to Emily for sharing her lovely tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

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: Martina Reisz Newberry

Our next tattooed poet is Martina Reisz Newberry, who sent us this photo:

Martina "wanted something beautiful with the added blessing of Lord Buddha’s face and the lotus tabernacle." She credited Body Electric Tattoo in Hollywood, California, with the work and adds, "I love the idea of my body being a canvas for something enchanting."

Martina sent us the following poem:

LITANY

(from “Learning By Rote” Deerbrook Editions, 2012)

Who are they, these blurred figures
Longing for a digital fix?

They’ve given up peace to play at passion,
they claw at a God who keeps spiritual secrets.

(God has always kept secrets, it is we who tell
every thing we know to every one we know.)

They are us, I fear.
When does mercy kick in?

Whitman waited for mercy to kick in and,
if fame and book sales are any measure,

compassion showed itself eventually.
Whitman whispered “Why not me”

into the dark brown night of the city
and the city handed him black-eyed boys

with Spanish tongues as warm and
malleable as communion wafers.

There has to be a ripening along the way.
The dim, disturbing trail of news items

can’t be all there is to trouble our hearts.
Dante Alighieri admonished us to

“remember tonight for it is the beginning
of always,” but we don’t remember.

Death all around us folds and unfolds
like a fan. We are losing things

that were so much more negligible
than we’d ever believed.

Our skillful flippancies
reek of a bad track record

and we use ideograms for the words
we can no longer say (Mother, Father, Family).

We are orphaned in this land of
Barney the Dragon

and Beefcake calendars.
Those blurred figures—

they have regret etched into their bodies.
It’s not a good look.

Jazz bands accompany the gluttony for power
we’ve managed to encourage and we believe

every word we’ve ever told ourselves. So, then,
where is mercy or the exegesis of mercy?

Somewhere, someone is cutting hair,
dancing to the music of a twelve-string,

baking cinnamon buns, creating ideograms.
Somewhere, someone is staring up

at the enormous sky of a fallen city and
counting transgressions instead of stars.

~ ~ ~

Martina Reisz Newberry’s most recent book is WHERE IT GOES (Deerbrook Editions, 2014).

She is also the author of LEARNING BY ROTE (Deerbrook Editions, WHAT WE CAN’T FORGIVE. LATE NIGHT RADIO, PERHAPS YOU COULD BREATHE FOR ME, HUNGER, AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE: POEMS 1996-2006, NOT UNTRUE & NOT UNKIND (Arabesques Press) and RUNNING LIKE A WOMAN WITH HER HAIR ON FIRE: Collected Poems (Red Hen Press).

Ms. Newberry is the winner of i.e. magazine’s Editor’s Choice Poetry Chapbook Prize for 1998: AN APPARENT, APPROACHABLE LIGHT.

She is also the author of LIMA BEANS AND CITY CHICKEN: MEMORIES OF THE OPEN HEARTH— a memoir of her father, (one of the first men ever to be hired at Kaiser Steel in Fontana, CA in 1943)—
published by E.P. Dutton and Co. in 1989.

Newberry has been widely published in hard copy journals and on line in the U.S. and abroad. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo Colony for the Arts, Djerassi Colony for the Arts, and at Anderson Center for Disciplinary Arts.

A passionate lover of Los Angeles, Martina currently lives there with her husband Brian and their fur baby,
Charlie T. Cat. Her website is here

Thanks to Martina for sharing her poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2014 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.

Buddha at the NYC Tattoo Convention

Sometimes when you go to tattoo shows, you don't always get the full story behind people's work. For many people; it is just art for art's sake, and people like me, who ask "What does it mean?" can be annoying little nuisances.

Here's a piece I spotted at the NYC Tattoo Convention earlier this month. I took the photos and I met the artist, but I'll let the work speak for itself:

This is a Buddha tattoo by Sid Lopes at 7 Tattoo Gallery in Newark, New Jersey. Here's a different angle with less glare and a better shot of the om symbol:

And then a better perspective of the paint-splattered lotus blossoms:

I never caught the name of the wearer of this tattoo, but I did get a chance to profess my admiration of it to the artist.

[Update 7.17.2018 - Found my notes, four years later! This tattoo was on Rachel.]

Thanks to Sid Lopes for sharing his work with us here on Tattoosday!

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.

No Mud, No Lotus

Back in July, at the NYC Poetry Festival, I was awash with poetry and a wide array of tattoos.

I met Jhani, who shared this tattoo on her arm:

This lotus flower was inked by Chris at Outer Limits in Costa Mesa, California.  It reads, “No Mud, No Lotus.”

When I asked her what this meant, she replied, "To me, it means patience." She added, "it’s also a reminder to be conscious of my decisions and also how turmoil can create life as long as you’re open to existing in a dark and dirty position, especially if it’s in your own like cycle for a while.”

Thanks to Jhani for sharing this fantastic tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

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.