This Too... (Joolz Denby on the Tattooed Poets Project)

Our last post for the 2020 Tattooed Poets Project (in National Poetry Month, at least), comes to us from a returning contributor, Joolz Denby.

Joolz appeared in the Tattooed Poets Project in 2012 here.

Joolz sent us the following tattoo from her leg, noting she "thought it was appropriate."

Indeed, very appropraite.

The artist is Ben Stone (@benstonetattoo) in Derby, UK.

Jools also sent along the following poem:

Boy, You Need the Road      

Boy, you need the Road,

the lazy white stitch of heaven’s path leading through the

sun’s bright benediction criss-cross and mazy to some

wild-thyme scented hillside lying silvery sweet and

blood warm under high cirrus clouds embroidering

the lapis-lazuli of the southern sky like prayer flags,

far, far away from the bricks and mortar menagerie

of your home town’s crash-and-burn Saturday night circus.

Boy, you need the Road,

nights of fast-forward spirit-driven dazzling highs;

luminous surf pulse of breathing icy turquoise oceans,

you sprawled on a black beach wrapped in a ragged blanket,

a salt-green witch fire flickering cold and lighting up no earthly place

but burning in your flesh like those lost and long-gone kisses you

miss so much and crave with a junkie’s jack-up fever

in your aching and unmended heart.

Boy, you need the Road,

playing your old guitar through dawn’s blue incense

that rises over canyons of crystal sheathed skyscrapers

in a hotel room so  bleach-clean and anonymous it hurts,

the songs you pick so idly the diary of your flight,

staring into the lying whore of a mirror that shows a face you

would not have known to be your own - a face that shows everything

but tells nothing to the world you travel like a cruel angel.

Boy, you need the Road,

it will be your sweet and savage consolation, Star,

it will be your demon lover and your loving mother both,

wrapping you in webs of contradiction and razor-bright illusion,

as sinning saint and sanctified sinner you eat magic, breathe voodoo,

try everything as you search through souks and shanties, plazas

and favellas - dirt and diamond-crusted alike - for a way

into the shadow-land to find your true name and your dead love.

Boy, you need the Road,

if you don’t go, go, go - fast as those great opal wings can bear you

out of the stink and ceremony of your expected life -

if you don’t go - and this is no word of a lie, my sweetheart,

real life will get you, and a nice girl and her babies

will get you and bang-up straight-time work will get you

and you’ll choke on it all in the neat little chain-store bedroom

where you cry when you think no one hears your terrible pain.

Boy, you need the Road,

better run, baby, better run right now and don’t look back

because you mustn’t regret and you mustn’t hear the siren song

sung by the ones who stayed and lost and drank and drugged

their way to their own safe and stinking seat at the bar in Hell Town:

so run fast on those long legs and shake the clinging dust

of home from your boot heels as an offering to Holy Mother Mary,

a sacrifice for your last chance free and clear rock n’ roll great escape.

Well, that’s my prayer for you, anyhow, that’s my last blessing.

So, boy, you need the Road;

you need the Road,

you need the Road,

Boy listen, listen, listen - before it’s all too late.

You need the Road.

~ ~ ~

Joolz Denby is an artist/tattooist/writer /poet from England and can be found on Facebook here, Twitter (here), Instagram (here), YouTube (here), Amazon (here), and at https://www.joolzdenby.co.uk/.

Thanks to Joolz for contributing again to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2020 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.

Joseph's Flash Hands

Back on Independence Day I posted a chest piece on Joseph (here) that I took a photo of last June on the Whitehall subway platform. I had been meaning to post Joseph's hands, as well, so here they are:

The pocket watch, swallows and bell were all tattooed by Matt Huff (@matthufftattoo) at Brooklyn Ink (@originalbrooklynink) in Bay Ridge. Joseph told me the work is based on the flash of the legendary Dan Higgs.

Thanks to Joseph for sharing his ink with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2018 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 Wolahan on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Emily Wolahan, who shared her ink with us:

Emily tells us:

"My first tattoo was one of the birds in the flock I've got on my arm (the one at the bottom). They are all swallows and this first one I had done immediately after my daughter was born. I was living in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England—the first time I'd lived permanently outside the US in over 10 years. As a kid who grew up moving around internationally, I never felt like I had a home and when I relocated to England, the sense of being unmoored hit me again. I chose the swallow because sailors would get a swallow for each 5,000 nautical miles traveled. I felt I'd earned at least one. Later, I liked the idea of having a swarm. The swallow can also symbolize a successful journey and when I had the other swallows done, I was on my way out of Newcastle and headed back to the US."

She also shared the following photo with a couple additional pieces:

Emily added:

"My next tattoos are for my family. On my wrist is an ornate "S & F," my kids Sylvie and Franklin. The band further up that arm is the same design as on my wedding band. This tattoo was done by Greg Rojas at Ed Hardy's Tattoo City in San Francisco. Greg was recommended to me, but I hadn't really put the whole 'Ed Hardy' thing together until I was at the studio. Ed Hardy himself came in while I was on the table for a chat. Greg's since moved up to Petaluma, but I hope I can have him do my next, as-yet-undecided tattoo—he's incredible."

In addition to her tattoos, Emily shared " old poem, in honor of when the tattoos happened," noting that "the title is from Thomas Hardy—the 'sly and unseen' day is the one when death comes:

SLY AND UNSEEN

The infant cannot stop laughing. 

In the white gallery, his mother inspects 

where concrete meets a burst of dirt feeding 

blades. Freshly painted walls abut 

the grass line guttering. 

She watches it fed synthetic sun.  

Exhibit: new air, new cycle. 

The infant laughing. 

Below a flat gallery of clouds, the city pigeon 

must rise, beating against the volume 

of empty space, its intricate layer, 

feather moving air.  

Hollow bones espouse its inaccessible landscape, 

push higher, higher, until pressure changes, 

oxygen changes and turn then to

plummet in an open marriage to the core.  

The backward pump of a bird landing 

in the full sway of pregnant trees, 

their acknowledgement of captive air. 

To step barefoot on the grass,

to change limbs' mobility, lightness in bones, 

coolness between toes and tickled ankle. 

The infant, laughing, 

bids goodbye to the room. The room collapses.  

It seems phenomenal an animal 

can hold still in that air.  

That some solutions 

become answers, their spatial disclosure 

a forklift of readiness. And the rest: 

our unseen day 

carried on and up and away.

~ ~ ~

Emily Wolahan is the author of HINGE, published by the National Poetry Review Press. Her poems have been published in Oversound, Boston Review, Volt, DIAGRAM, Tinderbox, and other places. Her poems have won the Georgia Review Loraine Williams Poetry Prize and the Arts & Letters Unclassifiables Contest. She is Senior Editor at Two Lines Press, Editor of JERRY, and lives in San Francisco. She is currently an Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.

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

This entry is ©2018 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.

Keith's History in His Traditional Tattoos

Yesterday, I posted about the opening (here) for the Tattooed New York exhibition at the New York Historical Society.

There was a lot of history in the room, as well, in the form of people. I struck up a conversation with one gentleman and his wife. His name was Keith Wagner and he shared the following tattoo:

What does this have to do with tattoo history? Keith is the great-nephew of Charlie Wagner, In other words, his grandfather, Stephan, was Charlie's brother. Charlie Wagner, who died in 1953, patented a tattoo machine in the early part of the 20th century, had a successful supply company and tattooed for decades on the Bowery.

This tribute to the family name which he proudly bears was inked by Dano Collins.

Keith and his wife Jan also shared matching swallows tattooed by another tattooing legend, "Bowery" Stan Moskowitz:

Thanks to Keith and Jan for sharing their tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2017 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: Ruth Awad

In 2012, the poet Traci Brimhall said I had to talk to Ruth Awad. Ruth has a lot of tattoos and she is a damn fine poet. Ruth and I have emailed back and forth for four years (and in the mean time, at least a dozen other poets said, "Ruth is tattooed!"). Well, the planets finally aligned in 2016 and I am happy to have Ruth and her work appearing on The Tattooed Poets Project.

We don't get a lot of fully-sleeved poets, so let's just take a moment and look at all of the details in this work:

Ruth calls this her "poppy fox bunny sleeve" and credits Roger Ziegler, owner of  Bomber Crew Tattoo in Carbondale, Illinois. She adds that Roger "has a real talent for creating depth and detail with color, and he's one of the few artists who isn't my mother who has tattooed me."

Now, check out this lovely tattoo:

This is Ruth's "disco watercolor bear." She elaborates:

"Like nearly all of my tattoos, this one was done by my mother Deborah Stevenson. She used to run her own tattoo shop and art gallery in East Nashville, Tennessee, and I hope she opens another shop one day. She's incredible, and I'm not just saying that because I'm her daughter."

I'd have to agree her work is remarkable.

Next up are these swallows:

Ruth tell us:

"These are about a decade old now and could use a touch up. Anyway, Marty, the tattoo artist who trained my mom, did the swallow under my right collarbone as a kind of test for her when she was an apprentice – she had to make the left one match his (she did a fine job, too). Marty died a few years ago – it's interesting to think about a tattoo artist's work outliving them in this very literal way in someone's skin."

Readers following the site this month may recall that Katie Riegel's tattoo (here) was done by Ruth. A poet and a tattooist! Well check these cardinals out:

Ruth tells us:

"I tattooed these birds on my own ankle a few years ago. I was probably bored, and I immediately regretted the decision after I tattooed the first line – it was a hard pose to maintain! Wouldn't do that again, but I'm pretty happy with the result." 

Not bad for tattooing oneself, I must admit.

Ruth also chose to share the following poem, which isn't tattoo-related, but she's "still particularly fond of" it. It previously appeared in Diode:

Shame, Abridged 

Walk a circle of salt
around the bed. A handful 
of leaves or feathers.
This is how we hide 
every moment we lived in the ground.

~

When shame becomes your phantom hand that digs its nails into its fist.
When you move it like a muscle just to feel your skin tighten.
I was thirteen. I stood calf-high in meadow grass. Two high school boys,
counting each pixel of flesh as I peeled the fabric from my body.
Become a worse animal. Let your quills pin their eager hands to the dirt.

~

Here, my armor: a plate of bone beneath my breasts
and your weight on top of it. Your wife and kid waited at home.
But I could feel them, too.
The ceiling fan, turning and turning over,
always above you.

~

I am the yarrow at your heel, leave your starved with me.

~

Your chest rising the way a bow draws an arrow.
I want to teach this song
to the children we won’t make.

~

A lover said, You can’t make me fall in love with you
and just leave. It was like in the movies. What power
tastes like: knowing I could have him, even then.
How that one-room apartment with no AC
in the dead of summer made his skin wet,
made me want to see just how cold I could be.

~

I’m trying out what it means to be a woman
and take out the world with one bite.
Out of the garden and into the bog.

~

I am awake as any animal
under the star-wheeled night.

My skin a red slip
I could slick from my back
and start over

if I don’t get in my own way.

~

Behind the screen, vines cursive the names of ghosts,
the faucet beads into the basin.
Be the space between each drip.  

In the kitchen his calloused hand pins my thigh.  

I don’t want to be held that way,
but the body is already bones and dirt.
You can bury it anywhere.

~ ~ ~

Ruth Awad has an MFA in poetry from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The NewRepublic, The Missouri Review Poem of the Week, Atticus Review, Crab Orchard Review, CALYX, Diode, Southern Indiana Review, Rattle, The Adroit Journal, Vinyl Poetry, Epiphany, The Drunken Boat, and in the anthologies The Hundred Years' War: Modern War Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), New Poetry from the Midwest 2014 (New American Press, 2015), and Poets on Growth (Math Paper Press, 2015). She won the 2013 and 2012 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and the 2011 Copper Nickel Poetry Contest, and she was a finalist for the 2013 Ruth Lily Fellowship. She lives in Columbus, Ohio, with her husband and two Pomeranians.

Thanks to Ruth for sharing her poem and her amazing tattoos with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2016 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos 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.

Sean's Two Sides: Good and Evil

Here we are in February 2014, and we're finishing off with our last encounter from '13. Back in September, on Broad Street in Manhattan, I met Sean, who shared some of his tattoos with us:

Sean explained that these nautical stars and swallows represent good and evil:

"I did the stars on Adobe Illustrator – I took just basically an outline of regular ones and I did a little distressing to them and then decided to turn the colors around and not have full shadings on them, just like silhouettes of shadings. I thought it was a nice move and that’s when my artist said Okay I’ll do those."

His artist is Rich Fie at R&D Tattooing in Queens. He credited the devil and angel swallows to an artist named Lulu.

He also has this piece on his forearm:

Sean has been a musician for twenty-five years, playing drums, guitar, saxophone and harmonica. This tattoo represents his love of music.

Thanks to Sean for sharing his tattoos with us 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.

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