There’s a certain kind of poetry to the tattoo. Some people even get inked with poetry.
To kick off this month’s new Tattoo poetry theme, we gathered a list of the best tattoo songs we could find. So, click “play, ” and get the ink going from pen to paper.
Full Tattoo Songs List: Red Dragon Tattoo (Fountains of Wayne), Tattoos on this Town (Jason Aldean), Last Tattoo (Rehab), Das Tattoo-Akustik Version (Tieftoner & Franzi), Tattoo- Live at the Hull Version (The Who), The Rose Tattoo (David Byrne), Show Me Your Tattoo (Craig Morgan), Start Me Up (The Rolling Stones), Tattoo (Jordin Sparks), Tattoos & Scars (Montgomery Gentry), Tattoo (Van Halen), Tattoo (Gjan), Tattoo (Natasha Mosley & Tyga), Like a Tattoo (Sade), Immigrant Song-from Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Heavy Flyers), Beat the Devil’s Tattoo (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club), Your New Tattoo (The Bent Lovehandles), Tattoo-Parody of Nothin’ On You (“Weird Al” Yankovic), Tattoos (Frank Turner), Theme from The Rose Tattoo (Karaoke Library), Signed on My Tattoo (Army of Lovers), New Tattoo (Saving Abel), Texas Tattoo (Gibson/Miller Band), Pae Kon Suay (Tattoo Colour), Coal Tattoo (Linda Villarreal), Epaule Tattoo-single remix (Etienne Daho), Das Tattoo-Video Version (Tieftoner & Franzi), Half a Heart Tattoo (Jennifer Hanson), Soul Tattoo-Soul Album version (Margaret Becker), Moon Tattoo (Alfie Zappacosta), This Tattoo (David Wilcox), Fools Tattoo (Bedouin Soundclash), Love Tattoo (Imelda May), Tattoo (Jei)
Poetry Prompt
Think back. Do you remember the first time you ever saw a tattoo? Whose body did it adorn? Were you fascinated, delighted, frightened, or inspired? Put the memory in a poem. Take us back to the very first time. (Can’t remember a “first”? This is poetry. Not a problem. You can make a memory you never had.)
Thanks to our participants in last week’s poetry prompt. Here’s a recent Bottled & Canned poem we enjoyed from Monica…
Code: write it in a cryptogram
with disappearing ink. Roll
the parchment in a tight, tight scroll
then tie it with string in a knot as good as
a Gordian.
Stuff it in a bottle’s narrow neck
(and it has to be the dark amber glass
you can’t see through)
then transport it by boat far, far out
to unknown coordinates where ocean depth
is greatest
and fling it out to the sea where
it will sink so deep
the pressure will surely
be too much for any diver.
Above all, make sure the cork is fitted
loosely.
Call for Tattoo Photos for September Poetry Prompts
Do you have a tattoo? Are you willing to photograph it and share the photo with us, for possible use for our September poetry prompts? (Our September theme is going to be… tattoos.) If so, please share via Twitter or Pinterest and give us an @tspoetry or @EDaypoems, so we can find the share.)
Photo by ivoryelephantphotography Creative Commons, via Flickr.
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Sometimes we feature your poems in Every Day Poems, with your permission of course. Thanks for writing with us!
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Debi Swim says
Butterflies are Free
Grandpa had a tattoo,
an anchor – he had been in the Navy
most of the old men had them
on their arms where sleeves
could hide them.
Daddy had one when he
and Mom divorced,
across the top of his arm – Helen.
When they remarried
he had to sand it off…or something.
I didn’t think about tattoos
when I was young. You were a soldier or
jailbird and I didn’t aspire to either.
Then along came Cher
and her butterfly.
It took my breath…
a whole new image of being…
Once my parameters were
nurse, secretary, teacher, mother…
I wish I could say
I learned my lesson well
but here I sit
in mediocrity.
L. L. Barkat says
Debi, I really like this. Especially the part about “Helen” and the way, as a child, you’d have no idea exactly how it got there or how it disappeared. Then, of course, the adult in you knows so much more, because… it’s a tattoo, after all… not easy to come by or erase.
Debi Swim says
Thanks. Yes, from a child’s perspective. My dad died when I was six but Mom said he did get it removed, I don’t know how : ), but knowing my Mom it was the tattoo or the arm : ).
Maureen Doallas says
Tattooed in the Tyrol
Fifty-seven of his tats
went to his grave
with him, victim
of a murderer, lying frozen
but fully clothed,
completely equipped
for his next life, preserved
for five thousand years
on Austrian soil.
A cross on the inside
of the left knee, one
more on the back
of the right; six lines
running parallel above
the kidneys, two more
striking through the left
wrist, inner and outer
ankles, up and down
the spine, even that weak
Achilles tendon bearing
the sure signs of a healer
at work below the surface
of the skin, the hands-on
art made forever indelible.
This was acupuncture
in the Bronze Age, and Otzi
the Iceman got himself inked.
———-
The story of Otzi the Iceman is fascinating. (www.iceman.it/en/) Photos of his tattooes are available.
Debi Swim says
What a story this is – love it. “art made forever indelible.” very nice
Maureen Doallas says
I could not resist reducing to poetry the story of Carol “Smokey” Nightingale, master tattooist. The “facts” are all over the Web.
———
The Man With the Golden Needle
Every great tattooist leaves a legacy.
~ Carol “Smokey” Nightingale
It all started at the circus
where his mother worked.
She taught him the art
of tattooing, giving her kid
his first when he turned eleven.
By 1957 Smokey Nightingale,
said to have been born in a moose
pasture in northern Ontario,
was in the business he called
dermagraphics, his specialty
the female form. He’d mastered
that, no doubt, after a dozen years
in the Merchant Service. Smokey
had a way of cleaning his tools
and soon enough earned his name:
The Man with the Golden Needle.
He wielded his electric marker
inside a cage inside a shop
across from the Greyhound bus station
in the nation’s capital. That would
be Washington, D.C., Twelfth St.
to be exact. He had a Japanese attack
dog for security. He needed it,
especially on his busiest days inking
American presidents (on other people —
yarn-spinning being a lucrative sideline).
That electronic device, the one used for
“tattooing animals, humans
and for other applications” is better
known nowadays as a tattoo gun.
Not to get too technical but Smokey
got the patent, the first, on it the day before
Independence Day: July 3, 1979.
For reasons the research doesn’t reveal,
Nightingale took with him his only copies
of Patent No. 4,159,659 upon fleeing
these United States. Smokey’s relative,
a great great nephew, disputes the details
of the story in Tattoo Archive, citing
as evidence that the family up in Canada
was Catholic and two sisters were nuns.
Even if Smokey’s mother was a needlepointer,
the skin painter did exist. Check out his books
on Amazon and his flash in the Tattoo Museum
in Baltimore. Like another professional says:
“Every tattoo has a story. Every cover up has two.”
davis says
to be exact. He had a Japanese attack
my fave line
davis says
http://nancemarie.blogspot.com/2013/09/put-it-down.html
put it down in ink
a sign
that i
was a swirling
scrawl of blue
in this place
this time
tinged words
that you can
wear
like a rose
tattoo
Mike Jewett says
Tattoos & Cigarettes
I remember when you were all
Tattoos & cigarettes
For me-
Cherries and swallows inked on your skin
You knew how tattoos got me going
Especially on you.
How you used to light a Marlboro
With a devilish grin
And blow your smoke right at me
Maybe a few smoky kisses,
Sexy in your scally cap
While you’d snap inhale
Huge white balls of smoke
Popping out of your mouth,
Right back in,
God how I loved that,
And you knew how your smoking got me going-
Your smoking was always the sexiest.
In our little barn
You’d show off your new tattoos
Smiling like the sun.
So what happened to
The tattoos & cigarettes
We used to share?
Daria says
Your poem made me cry.
Mike Jewett says
Floccinaucinihilipilification
I carry the runes of you in my pocket
Smoothed while recalling
Your blank walks
A wash of blackcurrant and
Holly in your hair
Wandering aimless by shorn clapboard
and storm kestrels overhead.
I think of your eyes
While watching Venus blink,
Tiny speck of green popping
Out of the witching hour’s emptiness
Distracted by a sweet orb only daring to show itself
in blinking Morse code-
City firefly’s shy hesitant glow
of phosphorescent luciferase
Impermanent tattoos in the humid air
Asphyxiated by the hum
of flowing electrons by wayward wings
Vintage and neon.
I sweep your edda into the hearth
Ashen mingling of myrrh
and incense sprinkles its cinnamon
Onto bare exposed brick.
The lightning-scarred tree
with its bullseye of char
Burned inside-out,
Cindered base,
Reminds me of our concatenated dreams.
I touch the ghost of you
Roaming the paths of King’s Chapel
and Granary Burial Ground
Farsick and windtalking to yourself.
I still taste the ozone on your lips
After you rained all night.
I throw the bait of you into the water
and the sunfish of Northwood Lake nibble the worms
of your toes.
And I watch the sawing motion of your thoughts
on DVR over and over
Hearing the fibers tear
Knowing the damage of blades and friction
How your heart will always bear
All ninety stone
of Hunters Lodge.
Isabel Rogers says
I have part of Hamlet as a tattoo. I wrote this a while back about another poet, with another tattoo.
The Tattoo
Tell me, my love, as the book on my skin
splayed its pages in that endless breeze –
the book I dreamt then paid to be cut in
before I even knew you breathed,
when I blamed my faint on the warm tincture
of ink and antiseptic, not the unsheathed
needle swapped behind me for a dripping blade –
tell me, after the vaseline and scabs and the long
return to suppleness, why it fought again to bleed
when I saw you lift a sleeve to bare this
black amulet of words? Did it want to fill
empty vellum sliding in my epidermis,
or feel your faithless quill scratch an oath
from another time? Each will know its own.
Did you think you could rewrite this truth?
As the centuries spin, our halves lock and curse
as they have ever done. By these fractured signs
we stitch our pattern to a random universe.
Elizabeth W. Marshall says
Late, but mine may be found here
http://www.wynnegraceappears.com/2013/09/11/Tattooed-By-Grace