Tattoosday (A Tattoo Blog): crowns

Showing posts with label crowns. Show all posts

Thursday, September 7, 2017

Mat's Spectacular Skull

I stopped to talk to Mat on Broad Street earlier this week after noticing he had some nice tattoos on his arms.

However, he surprised me with this magnificent work on his whole torso:

Mat, a pastry chef from France, credited the work to Lucky Sailor Tattoo (@luckysailortattooparlor) in Nice.

Merci beaucoup to Mat for sharing this great tattoo with us here on 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.

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Marta's Tattoo Sustains Her

Earlier this month, at the entrance of Battery Park, I met Marta, a tourist from Spain. I saw this tattoo on her back and asked if she would share it. She graciously agreed.

Marta described this as a "floral crown," with the phrase "I will sustain you" within.

Marta told me that the phrase is from the book of Isaiah, in the Bible:

Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you. (Isaiah 46:4, New International Version)

Marta explained to me what this meant to her, but later wrote me and expressed in writing:

"... I was passing a really bad moment, and I was in bed for weeks. Then I realized that there was something more, something helping me. And this strength I was receiving through the love of my sister, parents and aunts should be the reason to start fighting again. I don't know how, but my faith appeared in this very moment.

And this sentence from Isaiah has been essential in my life. These four words are what I say to my students when they feel upset or worried and these four words were the first said in my wedding."

It's such a lovely tattoo and a beautiful story, and I am happy that Marta agreed to share the tattoo with us.

She credited Zeila Ruiz (@zeilaruiz) with the tattoo work at Italiano Diablo Tattoo (@italianodiablo) in Madrid, Spain.

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

Saturday, July 2, 2016

Tattoosday Goes to Rochester: Christina's Knuckles Are Reminders

Earlier this week, I was in Rochester for business and, while grabbing breakfast at a cafe in an office park, I noticed one of the employees had some knuckle tattoos. I introduced myself to Christina and she happily shared her ink:

Chrstina, explained that these are, in part, in memory of her ex-boyfriend, who passed away.
She told me, "We're all ticking time bombs and he's my diamond in the sky."

And the crown? Christina smiled, "This is to remind myself never to be treated anything less than a princess."

These were inked at one of the tattoo shops on Lake Avenue in Rochester.

Thanks to Christina for sharing her cool knuckle tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Friday, May 20, 2016

The Tattoos That Time Forgot

This post is dedicated to the folks who shared, told me about their tattoos, but the recordings were lost before I could transcribe them. Perhaps they'll come looking for their posts and fill in the blanks some day in the future.

First up is this compass rose from Eli, who I met in August 2015 in Owl's Head Park in Brooklyn:

Eli's friend Noah shared this pillar:

A couple weeks later, in Times Square, I met Doug, who shared this trio of tattoos:

Doug has traveled the world and has gotten inked in numerous cities. I remember the six red lines were done in Thailand on November 11, 2011, or 11/11/11. No more info on the crown or the chili pepper.

The same day I met Doug, I also met Barry and Anthony, two guys visiting from Ireland. They shared these skin-rip bio-mech tattoos which were healing. They had received the work from Mark at Groove Tattoo in Brooklyn:

That's Anthony's, and this is Barry's:

Barry also shared this phoenix, which was tattooed elsewhere:

So, there, with one fell swoop, I've cleaned out some of my lingering images from 2015.

Thanks to Eli, Noah, Doug, Barry and Anthony for sharing their work. Apologies, dudes, for the recordings being lost to the ether!

Monday, April 29, 2013

The Tattooed Poets Project: Farid Matuk

Our next tattooed poet is Farid Matuk.

Check out this photo he sent:

That's Farid's foot on the bottom. He explains:

"I had this piece done at Suffer City Tattoos in Dallas, TX on New Year's day 2013. I believe the artist's name is Robert. I chose to replicate a freckle my daughter has on side of her right foot. I wanted to place a crown atop the freckle to suggest the special place she has in my heart.

She's also bossy in an endearing way, and I often feel I'm in training not to serve her needs (as the martyr model of parenting would have it), but to definitely make a place for her needs and agendas in my otherwise self-directed life. I guess this is typical of most parent/toddler relationships and the crown helps me commemorate this dynamic. I took the stylized crown design from a tattoo I saw show up on one of the many tattoo boards I follow on Pinterest. The original design has the crown adorning the top of a bird's head."

Farid sent us his poem, "My Daughter All Yourn," which, he explained, "is one of a series of sonnets [he] wrote after studying the sonnets of Bernadette Mayer. It appears (here) on the Poets.org/Academy of American Poets website."

My Daughter All Yourn

will she be closer to the falling away of the gaze of things than others?

hands on the water she calls scene setting

hands on the table water over the houses and hills swimming

not the ocean or the sea but the frame of time she’ll tell of

wild happy yeses in her hands

she bites through in rage when rage

comes to her or we do and she’s too small a flag

what does our house say? these borrowed things solid and whole

fabric lost to her a greasy boy speaks fast at the pizza stand

more available to be seen the young in their concerns

amidst the old artifice paint a boat and it will mean a dream

put names of your dear ones in it all yourn standing up

these little soft hands she bites through the bright white light of summer

shines off sand and vinyl siding itself composed against the salt

~ ~ ~

Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine Editions, 2010) and the chapbooks Is It The King? (Effing Press, 2006) and Riverside (Longhouse, 2011). New poems have appeared recently or are forthcoming online at Poets.org and in print in Black Warrior Review, Third Coast, Iowa Review, Mandorla, Critical Quarterly (UK), The Baffler, and other journals. This Isa Nice Neighborhood was a finalist for the Norma Farber First Book Prize, and received honorable mention in the 2011 Arab American Book Award. Matuk is a contributor to Scubadivers and Chrysanthemums: Essays On the Poetry of Araki Yasusada (Shearsman, 2011) and to the poetry anthologies American Odysseys: Writing from New Americans (Dalkey Archive, 2013) and Beyond the Field (Counterpath, forthcoming). His new chapbook, My Daughter La Chola, is forthcoming from Ahsahta in March, 2013.

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

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.

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