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that i am willing
to sit through this
suffering discomfort
and awkwardness
repeatedly and
of my own volition
must be a testament
to something
i am just not clear
whether it should
be taken as a positive
         or negative
it might show courage
could merely be folly
a sign of resilience perhaps
or remnants of my naivety
it could be inspirational
belief in oneself or
simply a case of conceit
let's be honest
it could be any of those
or it could be none
yet more than likely
i am overthinking
everything again
Madelyn Annette Nov 2023
A garden on my arm
I started as a teen
An insect that does no harm
I got tattoos to show my keen
Sense of free-spiritedness
I love my art
My bare arm I won’t miss
It’s just the start
Of my self-expression
Journey to the center
Phia Oct 2023
She covers her body in art
Hoping one day someone will look at her
And think her beautiful
David Hilburn Feb 2023
Taint, a tender trap?
Blue of the sky, remembered by a cloud:
Faintly, the poetry of life, and its hap
Has the voice to step forward, and remind the season of the proud:

A hatful of poor decision's, has its merit...
But the cool eye of embarrassment
Has come and gone, with meet to understand, limited...
To ours, the count of couth, is one more irony's lament?

Hate me when you see the dragon...
Ought fix and fit enough futures
The life of a needier first, is always a sorrow last, a harrowed tongue?
Has said the obvious, a role in the heinous is a fools curiosity...

Throwing tenderness at you, like one of thumbs even is...
Reasons may give you onus, a variety to concede a gift
Coming for beauty, and its rosy inclination, a truer wisdom
That has survived the heed, the beating wings of condition to lift:

Hate me one more time, a reality of pain has become a champion:
To the fate, the hardened courage of youth, with a challenged whisper?
May a knowing hurt, be the fascinated letter of providence
Seeing the obvious, a bird of purer colors, will finish the kiss?

Guns with an imagination...?
Salt in a brutish court, of angers more, to swear in romantic language
Still the burden of squalor, with a slighter lip of intimation?
Your fruit is sweeter by the secrecy, as if, a cold shoulder ever is a place for rage...
A garden for notorious Rock and Roll, tattoos that made the difference...?
Khoisan Oct 2022
Threading
into
the
skin around my soul
It
is
joyfully visible
the
scars
that they mend,
my eyes ride the glow
as
the
needle flows,
tattooed
palpability
bereft of demons,
I
let go.
I S A A C Nov 2021
tattoos on my neck but should be your lips instead
tattoos on my neck but should be your hands instead
I want every part of me, enmeshed in you
the sun kisses my back as she creeps up behind the hill
shedding light on the aftermath of drunken thrills
I miss the blaze of the blunt and the bass in the club
relinquish my demons as we are talking it up
do you like my eyes that's where they hide?
do you like my thighs wanna try them tonight?
because tattoos on my neck but should be your lips instead
Payton Hayes Feb 2021
Darling, do not tell me that you are more beautiful with those drawings on your skin.
You've convinced yourself that they mean so much to you, and no one can even begin to understand, but I want you to know that the real beauty of an individual is more than simply skin deep.
That is why the ink on your skin does not impress me.
Everyone has stories and scars —I just choose not to wear mine on the outside.
This poem was written in 2016.
Disclaimer: I love tattoos and scars. I have some of my own. :)
Sara Feb 2021
Face down on my friend's bed
I wait for my shoulder
to lose feeling,

Secretly hoping the pain will last a little longer,
while she drives ink into my body
over and over and over.

I hope she isn't too drunk
to make the lines straight,
because I'm tired of hearing my mother say,

"those look like the tattoos my patients get in prison"

a sentiment always met with
an exaggerated eye roll,
and a stronger desire to let my friends get drunk
and stab me with needles
over and over and over.
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