The Tattooed Poets Project: Sue Swartz

Today's tattooed poet, Sue Swartz, hails from Bloomington, Indiana, and offers up her forearm for all the world to see:

Photo by John Narmontas

Sue explains:

This is a 2-part tattoo story. On my 54^th birthday, I had the Hebrew word for truth (emet) imprinted on my right (i.e., writing) forearm in traditional black Torah script. I wanted a useful reminder for my art; also the word contains one letter that is a stand-in for life/God and two others that spell out the word “dead”. Okay, it was a little heavy. Two years later, this past November, when I couldn’t take looking at the damn truth anymore, Dina Verplank of Voluta Tattoo in Indianapolis beautified the baldness of the lone word with a branch from the Tree of Life and a spiral/root system.

Photo by John Narmontas

 And Sue offers up this poem:

MID-LIFE

Damn. Another 3 a.m. flying dream.

This time I’m on a cement slab hurtling toward over-grown lawns

covered with large plastic pigs and spiked coat hangers.

This is not what normal people dream.

Awake, I tilt (normal, not normal) on a giant seesaw of guilt

by association and realize:

I might not really know what normal is—

My dead – crazy bastards every one – left far too many clues,

though not one legible note of navigational instruction.

Minds overtaken by spirals and whirligigs, Greek letters

and the rising price of toilet paper, they wore the warp & weave

of their affliction stoically.

Seamlessly, one might say, and with understated finesse.

Running off to Florida on a Tuesday-morning whim:

In the realm of normal.

Snapped-on pills for breakfast:

Mildly normal.

Washing, washing again, again, again. Refusing to shake

the hand of strangers:

Undeniably normal (well, yeah – you never know

who’s got what).

With garments torn & heads made bare, they bob in and out

of traffic, sit close to me in restaurants, carefully chewing

with their electrode mouths.

My dead have secrets. That much is abundantly clear.

I listen for whispers of their generous madness, find

they’ve come while I’m asleep. Bad timing is all I’ve got.

That, and fingerprints left on the towels.

No, I don’t shush them away: then I’d lose the true nature

of everything. If I don’t know what normal is, why not

claim these people as kin?

How else to name my own impurities and small derangements?

~ ~ ~

Sue Swartz is a poet, hired-gun-political writer, amateur ballroom dancer, favored grandparent, social justice activist, occasional yogini, and creator of alternative Jewish ritual. Her work has been published in Cutthroat Magazine, Lilith, 5 a.m., SmartishPace, and elsewhere. She wishes she had a book you could buy. You can find her blog Awkward Offerings at http://swartzsue.wordpress.com/. She makes her home in Bloomington, Indiana and believes that Leviticus (You are not to make gashes in your flesh for the dead nor incise marks on yourself.) goes a bit overboard.

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

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Ben Commemorates the Cat and the Tree

Ben recalls wandering off one day when he was four years old. He was up in Wells, Maine with his family and no one knew where he'd gone.

Fortunately for Ben, someone did know: the family cat. A la Lassie, the feline led his parents straight to Ben, who was sitting under a tree, munching on blueberries.

To this day, Ben regards this as a crucial moment in his life when he was saved by the cat.

He collaborated with Brendan Rowe at Pins and Needles Tattoo in Portland, Maine to come up with a commemorative tattoo to honor this animal:


Brendan is now working out of Unbreakable Tattoo is Studio City, California.

The tree nearby on his left forearm, was inked, in part, to complement the cat:


It is, however, also a nod to Gustav Klimt's "Tree of Life".
Not an imitation, but a variation.

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

Tiffany's Tree of Life

I was walking through Penn Station back on July 3 when I noticed the woman ahead of me had an interesting-looking tattoo on her inner left bicep.

But it was rush hour and I was off to a small birthday gathering so, when we went separate ways at the turnstiles, I sighed and thanked the tattoo deities for letting me meet two other people earlier in the day.

A few minutes later, however, while pacing the platform, I ran into her again. And, well, I couldn't resist talking to her about this fascinating tattoo:


Tiffany, who was visiting the East Coast from Los Angeles, was quick to point out that this was not the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Apparently the serpent confuses a lot of people.

In fact, Tiffany says the tree is based on the tree of life in Angkor Wat, Cambodia, where she visited two summers ago.

The presence of the serpent is due to her affection for snakes, and the image of the reptile climbing the tree in pursuit is a nod to the circle of life. The tree sustains the bird; the bird sustains the snake.

Of the three tattoos I saw on my birthday, this one just made my day. The detail is phenomenal, and I just loved the concept of the piece.

It was tattooed by Henry Lewis at Incognito Tattoo in Pasadena, although he has moved to Northrn California. Although not listed on their website, he has been associated with Everlasting Tattoo in San Francisco. Incognito's site says he still makes guest appearances at the shop in Pasadena.

Thanks much to Tiffany for capping off an awesome day by sharing her wonderful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!