tattoo
Shar "So, why are you getting one?"

"I can't keep secrets worth shit. I want a secret that I can keep."

"That's bullshit. The only reason people want a tattoo is so they can either show people that they're a badass, or so they can be in control of themselves."

"..."
000306
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brett makes men of men 000306
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moonshine Walking canvas 000614
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Barrett Folded pages in the book of ones life. 000614
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Splinken Though I'm not religious, I'd like a tattoo of the biblical passage about the
rose of sharon.
000614
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grendel there's enough irony in that to choke a fundamentalist.

i couldn't quote you chapter and verse anymore, but i think there is a biblical prohibition against body modification.
tattooing, piercing etc...
except of course for circumcision

i'm pretty sure it's in there, though.
000614
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Glory Box is a song, a picture, a feeling. You're tattooed on my skin, my soul, the backs of my eyelids, and everytime I blink I can see your face, not smiling, because you rarely did that, but watching me, skeptically, waiting for me to fall, again. 001111
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sabbie and it was one of the first things i ever noticed about you
when you first walked into the room
and into my life.
you wore an old old singlet
with your skin
peeping through the holes
and the colours
and semi-hidden designs
caught my eye

and when, that next week
we met again
and took your shirt off
and i saw them all
around your belly
up your back
along your arms
and across your breast
and you, so liberated
so strong
and so full of life,
that i wanted to be near you forever

and now, a year after
a strangers drunken rage
left you broken and dead
on some uncaring pavement
and it all still hurts so much
i find myself thinking
that if only i could wear your tattoos
then they would be my armour
and i could walk into the sunset
unafraid
001111
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meg
Excuse to heal scars
never ok unless something is happening that causes pain
needle rips into flesh
blood and ink washed away time and time again
A piece of meat wrapped in cling film
show off
fuck up
001122
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misstree the stain beneath skin that you gave me, the little lizard that appeared, mysterious and beautiful, art meets scar, and we had both of them, baby... i will always remember this, my first ink, the forces that moved me though this moment... and someday i will smile in wistful reverie, instead of grimacing for the loss of you. 001122
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daxle have a cat on my back, doesn't seem to mean much 001122
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daxle have another one
doesn't seem to be the kind of pain I need to feel better
001229
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unhinged i want a tattoo of the buddha on my right shoulder and the chinese character for enlightenment on my lower back 010201
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SCOTT i've a tatto of "peace" chinese style on my forearm
according to some chinese readers, it could mean peace, or "now"
or love
check out the tat fore you get it
010202
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G_wiz13 I gave myself a tattoo once I was angry and needed a way to feel pain. Then i was really pissed and i cut it out of my skin. left a nice scar of an s that being the first letter in my ex-girlfreinds name. I thought i was in love with her. turns out it was actually lust, but now i know the true meaning of love, and share it with my knew girlfreind coincidence or not her name starts with an s as well. 010202
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Mike elegant scar
beautiful acheing
lovely pain
why the hell didn't
i get something else?
010222
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mmm not just for looks, i already know what my first tattoo will be, a set of very important dates on my wrists. it's not just to make myself look like a bad ass 010402
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Miner Hatred of self, rebellion to power, to prove a point, because i wanted one.

Non Sum Qualis Eram

A mark of change in the fires of my soul.
010515
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Miner Now because its an addiction, a driving force within pushes me on, the burning pain of getting one, the love of the image of them, both driving me further and further, already 2 fair sized ones, a large border/addition still planned 010515
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Moe tattoos, yeah...I have 6...mmmm
the addictive intoxication of ink and pain, the intentional expression of ones own disposition...ink can speak volumes, like a smile or a scream
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sUpersLutstAr yeAh... so mAybe i hAve oNe.... bUt it'S not a trOphy... it's nOt a spEctAcle... it's noT foR decOrAtion... it'S a DeclArAtion of loVe... iT's a sYmbol oF twO peOple togEthEr forEver... it's mY engAgemEnt riNg... 010829
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blue star A blue anime girl... and a tiny lil star. 2 images, in and of themselves unremarkable. But they drive me crazy. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy four times over. I want you so much. What will I ever do? 020425
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poetic_onslaught they're memories and explain who u are. u shouldnt get one if it doesnt somehow explain your personality, who you are, or how you feel. i have one on my leg of my name that i did when was high. i was 12 and i did it with a homemade tat machine. i dont like that one. i really like the one on my back. it says smile now cry later and has 2 thugged out faces under them. the one thats crying has a bandana and the one thats laughing has a pachuco hat (the hats that them original mexican gansters wore with the zoot suits). 020425
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Norm I've got a tattoo with a dragon wrapped around my arm holding a maple leaf. 020425
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imbo use goat soap!! 020426
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blamethesky four at 17, and still going.
two you can see. one almost no one knows about.
one black star behind the ear.
two nautical stars. one on each inner upper arm.
one of cherries on my hip.
next one: broken heart on the inside of my wrist.
020427
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Syrope i have a henna one at the moment...a sun on the inside of my wrist... 020428
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Sailor Jupiter I got one on Oct 9th, 2001 after year sof deciding exactly waht I wanted. I got a claddagh on my lower right back. 020428
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blown cherry I've looked every where but I still can't find the right design for me.
Not that I'm planning on giving up the search...

I got one of those 3 week jobs around 3 months ago, and went out and got sunburnt the next week, so It's still with me, just in negative now :)
020501
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Ariadani when i went to chicago a couple weeks ago, i went into a used book store, and i spent the better part of a half hour looking at this gorgeous book--it was all just pictures of people with tatoos and the people that tatooed the things on them. some of the tatoos were so amazing, they were like paintings rather than "just" pigment underneath skin.

i really appreciate beauty.

on the other hand, ugly-ness has its place, too.
020501
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werewolf Tattooed lady
Come into my tent quickly, for soon the public will flock to see me. I am the only one they still suspect as real, or really unsettling. The others, the bearded lady, the strong man, they are still spectacles, but they have been found rather plain, a chance birth, some dusty barbells given on a twelth birthday combined with the fascination towards being able to move things where others sit and feign business. They see an oddysey on my body, and of course you do too. They think i am beautiful, they look to my breasts, to the long lines of my calves for the places left out on the maps, for creatures they suspect they had seen for a brief moment before their eyes affirmed it as some ordinary meaningless animal, as still and complacent as one of the many road signs that leads to their house. Mulberry avenue or Sneath lane. They gasp when they see the banner still unfurling around my arms that is in some foreign language, that people of all languages imagine as being one other than their own because it is in no true language. People still flock to see my skin, their lives brought to the surface. They read me like a map, sometimes they cry, like an old woman reading the letter that her son would not come home from the war. It has been a long time since there has been a war, but they still recognize and recoil at the sharpness of the bayonets which seem to be entering and continuing my spine from the outside in. You know that i am full of hate and pain though, you know it is not beauty, you have been patient, and fearless where others feigned exhaustion because they saw themselves becoming another stain on my flesh and were terrified. That fearlessness should be rewarded. So i will repay you. I will tell you my story briefly, for you see that beyond the marks it is the marking. I must be brief, because the siamese twins and the geek will not distract anyone for too long and i shall have to go on, this is a hungry age, and the geek eats few things that the audience would not, and the siamese twin is more mobile than many of them, whereas my torture is an extravagance. People still pay to see me, abandon their children for the night, plunk down the modern equivalent of promises and gold. The rest of the tents are filled only with each towns passing wind, and the strange whistling it makes, always the whistling, but always slightly different, if we are above a mountain or by the sea.
My first tattoo came after i was given a pet lizard for my birthday. I kept it for a while. But then i bit into it one day, between its neck and its shoulder blade. Its blood was so cold and dark like ink, i was delighted. I had been wondering if it was poisonous and with it in my hands it had seemed all there was left to do, and the cold rush of its blood further confirmed that it had been waiting for me to release it, because its insides were cold, were waiting to expand from their frozen state, so keen in the flickering of its tongue or the nervous darting of its eyes. My father and mother gasped in horror. And my eyes nervously darted with a giggle. From then on I was kept up in my room or watched closely when it was not too tiresome for my family so that i could not destroy anything else precious. I used to draw on myself with a pen while in there, while looking out the little small window, and sometimes people passing by would point and i would draw bad girl on my wrists and i would lick it clean and in the reflection of a mirror i would see if my tongue could pick up the imprint. But safety was ascertained in me and i was given more, more things which i eventually killed though i learned subtelty. I was an avid huntress. People found out about me. So my first tattoo was a deep stabbing smudge which was to remind me of the pain, to remind me not to kill anymore. After my initial awkward marking, beauty became more important, to cover up those marks i did not want, i sought out my sideshow and i lived it. And i've learned a few lessons. Even you who should know better, you look at me with the same naevity, and see beauty, choices, see poetry in the records set to skin with sharp painted needles. You see the unmoved mover, a goddess stands before you offering you the mysterious markings that could unlock your life. The show is starting now. I will have to drop my robes, my skin will tighten in the cold air and the colors will seem to breathe. I showed you my first tattoo, now part of a chain of flowers encircling my wrists, and you say that they pale in comparison to the beauty of the tigers crouching on my breasts, the sirens singing from the crook of my back, daring you to pass them to the spiders wrestling on my thighs. My hunting cats, the taut bowstring, the clown hanging off the moon have not faded, still draw people to see me opaque in the spotlight, beyond reproach, inspiring of terror and mystery and sometimes a moment of passing envy.
020501
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stork daddy see rikki ducornet 020501
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Ariadani this reminded me of a song my friend sent me. but here are the lyrics:

The Woman wit' the Tattooed Hands

I used to know this woman who had the most beautiful tattoos on the top sides of both of her hands.
She was 43 years old, and as far as i know, had never yet been with a man.
It's not that she wasnt attractive, (she was beautiful!) it's the way that she interacted. She was aggressively-passive, to the point where she would have intimidated any mit that ever tried to catch it.

On her right hand she had a tattoo of a nude girl,
she claimed it is what god resembled. But on the left, she had the mirrored image of the same female, and this one, she explained, looked like the devil.

I remember once watching her touch her own breasts, how the tattoos smiled as they stared down her stomach, as if anticipating when they'd be allowed to carress the sweet flower that they both seemed to hunger--

Now, maybe i was high, but it felt so right, heaven and hell both taped to this womans womb, and it made sense, how she could commence touching herself with me wide awake in the same room.

But if i've learned anything in my years,
i've learned that i no longer believe in suprise,
but what happened next damn near stole my tears, the tattoos came alive right in front of my eyes.
They both slowly stood up and climbed off her hands, and showed me why she never took some time with a man,
they climbed deep inside this woman's garden
she closed her eyes, though she gently bit her bottom lip.

I stepped, i left, and i dont regret leaving, and i'll never forget all the things i saw that evening.
a glimpse of religon, a piece of coming closer to understanding more about what who treats me most-
I didnt get turned on, i just got turned
i wasnt as aroused as i was concerned
for each woman ive ever hurt- every time i've been burned ive got a lot to teach but even more to learn.
so now i keep my eyes open hopin' to take in all i can about woman taking in all that she can, and for as long as i breathe, i'll save a seat in my memory for that woman with the tattooed hands.

There's good and evil in each individual,
identifies needs and feeds our desires, as long as we keep our spirit inspired, she can bite her bottom lip all she wants...
(repeats last stanza)
020501
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3eth To you, three my stars in the night. You took my hand led me away from death. For you, this ink in my skin, on my wrists. For your memory in my heart, on my mind. Two stars, two promises. I will never cut. Suicide will not be my solution. Two black stars on my wrists, For ever. Two promises I will keep, For ever. 020826
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je5icafletcher i have one now. 030228
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Piso Mojado the illustrated man, by ray bradbury 030228
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Jennifer Bethke I get tattooed because it is a pain that I can control. Living with a chronic illness forces you to relinquish almost all your control over pain and fatigue in you body; by getting this tattoo, I was again showing myself and the world that I still have some control over my life. Four hours under a tattooist's needle, and for the first time in my life I can look in the mirror and know who I really am. The images will be there whenever I need a reminder of my life thus far. And I am finally beginning to like what I see in the mirror and in those memories.
Amazing things, endorphins.


From: Painful Permanent Pictures -by Me
030505
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scifiinja i want to get a little star tattoo over the scar i have, so i can stop hating myself. i want a black swallowtail butterfly somewhere, an orange one. i loved that cat. 030720
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magenta i run my fingers over black ink words of your back. you flinch. needing time space distance that i cannot seem to let myself give.

"does it hurt?" i say.

"no," you reply. "the pain's fading. now it's just a sort of itch."

((i would have loved to make you cry.))
030730
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fall of a sparrow your eyes wet and black. wild and wide. you looked at the clock, its three red numbers holes in the overcoat darkness. 030731
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nick She doesn't wear her tattoos like so many wannabe punk grrrls with their Japanese or Celtic symbology inked all over themselves like a toddler playing with a magic marker. That false image they put on themselves is a wasteful, tragic, desecration of such canvas. These tattoos were her body. They existed as part of her not a marking mind you, but as expressive as another face.

Such beauty and meaning imparted upon her body through such pain and effort and sacrifice and honesty and vision and purity.

God help me when I see her.

It's hard to be a friend sometimes.
031011
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ferret i had a bad day again 031011
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who i am doesnt matter anymore for years i didnt want to get one because i never had anything i wanted on my body forever. my boyfriend always told me to get somthing that made me happy...well that doesnt work cuz i dont know what makes me happy. but i ended up getting one with my best friend a month or so ago, the pain was amazing. on my foot it is, i like it. it still amazes me that itll still be there when im 80. and the fact that mom didnt kill me, and dad still dosnt know. its nice. 031025
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Crystal Villasenor i been wanting to get a tatto since i was 13 years old it all has a meaning to what you have live or planning to. i think that having tattos are pretty cool, yeah i guess some are to over reacted but one little one is nices, some peolpe get thyem to show of or others beacuse they love art and the way they look but evrryone has there own opinion about tatto i love them and my mom hates them !!! 031107
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Crystal Villasenor i been wanting to get a tatto since i was 13 years old it all has a meaning to what you have live or planning to. i think that having tattos are pretty cool, yeah i guess some are to over reacted but one little one is nices, some peolpe get thyem to show of or others beacuse they love art and the way they look but evrryone has there own opinion about tatto i love them and my mom hates them !!! 031107
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sfdhgsfhdehjefdhj kinda looks like delorian 031122
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yerp i don't have one but i'd like one.
give me ideas
031218
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string see: tattoo_design 031218
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Nirvanic Blind I'd like to get a tattoo starting a little above my waist that goes down to my....well, u know. Do yall think there'd be any bad side effects to this? I'm a male by the way. 031218
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misstree is a deviant encyclopedia shaving will make things itchier and make the hair come in thicker. and healing will be difficult, as you want to keep the area only slightly moist (no excessive humidity down dere) and as friction-free as possible until your scabs come off.
i've never known of any other strange side effects, but asking tat artists is a good start, and you might be able to dredge pertinent info or links over at bmezine.com, though i've never been able to find an actual discussion board.
031219
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jezebell that i may be art, too
and remember
and be beautiful even when i am ugly
040418
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unhinged i'm a little more in control of myself now

right to left rather than left to right
040828
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Q Yes, it would make a very nice one. I imagine where it might go.

Or, rather, they might go, as I also imagine each would desire to appreciate it on the other.

Of course, now I can speak for but one of them. If you know what I mean?

If it would come to that, it likely would be best to start with six-week ones. At the start, permanent usually ends up being much too long.

Oh, well ...
060209
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camille yikes, never had one
I don't take well to pain

the dance looks painful (grinning)
would be more so when i was 90
060209
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camille I believe a delicate simple redish brown henna tatoo would be nice gracing only a pinky finger

like so..

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a82/darlahood/hand.jpg
060209
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Candie The Crazystar I have A tatto inside my lip and only 3 people know. I didn't get it to show i'm a badass Or in control of my self I just wanted something simple and hidden from everyone else. 060621
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Roaul Duke i have a tattoo on my chest that is an eye witht flames that go up on my shoulder. 060622
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badjonni ink
black
colour
skin
pattern
decoration
ritual
initiation
clan
club
frat
070412
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unhinged i listened to that song about the lady with the tattooed hands in my brother's jeep in hawaii; i wonder who wrote it



tomorrow i'm getting my third one; a symbol for leo on my left hip. a piece of my brother on my left hip.
070412
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animals flower of death 071014
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grendel good_morning_senor 071231
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arwyn i want one. i just lack the money. I want a heart made out of a treble and bass clef and a butterfly somewhere.I don't know where for any of it. Maybe the inside of my wrists. I just don't want a tramp stamp. 100127
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Strideo

but some tattoos are taboos! aren't there some taboo tattoos that are too taboo to tattoo?
...
100817
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plop yeah, get a bar code done for originality 100817
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plop why? what bloomin' tatt do you have then?
a baby ladybird ?
100817
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plop "i love sandra"

what happens if you don't next week though?
100817
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unhinged new_ink this friday

my first design, color piece. i am excited.
100817
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srealisma i've decided if you pull it out and make it 3D it's the Tower of Babel. in 2D it's just a chip on my shoulder, but cooler. i think that's my final answer. 150625
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(z) (my tattoos are all invisible) 150626
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