This tattoo is on a friend of mine, whose knitting wares you should peruse.

Nature’s first green is gold
Her hardest hue to hold

So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

- “Nothing Gold Can Stay” by Robert Frost

(56 votes, average: 3.88 out of 5)

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This is Jess’s tattoo:

The design is an abstract dandelion. I just thought it exemplified the sentiment perfectly. I got this tattoo about a month after Vonnegut’s death.

This was posted as a part of “So it Goes” Saturdays.  The phrase “so it goes” appears in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five 116 times.  Can you help me collect 116 “so it goes” tattoos?  8 down, 108 to go.

(87 votes, average: 4.26 out of 5)

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This is another tattoo that belongs to Dese’Rae Stage (first, second).

I can see myself years back at Sunion,
hurting with an inflated foot, Philoctetes
in woman’s form, limping the long path,
lying on a headland over the dark sea,
looking down the red rocks to where a soundless curl
of white told me a wave had struck,
imagining the pull of that water from that height,
knowing deliberate suicide wasn’t my mJtier,
yet all the time nursing, measuring that wound.
Well, that’s finished. The woman who cherished
her suffering is dead. I am her descendant.
I love the scar-tissue she handed on to me,
but I want to go on from here with you
fighting the temptation to make a career of pain.

- Stanza VIII from Adrienne Rich’s “Twenty-One Love Poems” (full text)

(48 votes, average: 3.48 out of 5)

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This tattoo belongs to Dese’Rae Stage (see her other tattoo), and was done by Ryan Falcon at Almost Famous Tattoo in Miami, FL.

3 lines from the poem “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath:

And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.

I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.

And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.

(160 votes, average: 4.54 out of 5)

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This tattoo belongs to Dese’Rae Stage.

Sam tapped her hand on the steering wheel. Patrick held his hand outside the car and made air waves. And I just sat between them. After the song finished, I said something.

“I feel infinite.”

And Sam and Patrick looked at me like I said the greatest thing they ever heard. Because the song was that great and because we all really paid attention to it. Five minutes of a lifetime were truly spend, and we felt young in a good way.”

- Excerpt from The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

(142 votes, average: 4.52 out of 5)

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Someone sent me this picture of Hayden Panettiere.  Her tattoo reads “vivere senza rimipianti”, which is Italian for “to live without regrets”.  Unfortunately, the correct spelling is “rimpianti”.  Oops!

(70 votes, average: 1.39 out of 5)

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This tattoo was submitted by Christian, who says: “This is simply how I strive to live my life.”

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

- Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”

(173 votes, average: 4.60 out of 5)

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This tattoo was submitted by Alyssa:

This is my first tattoo. “On the Road” is so important to who I am today and was practically my bible when I was 17. It’s a reminder to me always live a life filled with passion.

“the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

- Jack Kerouac, On The Road

(52 votes, average: 4.12 out of 5)

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This tattoo was submitted by Bella.

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

- e. e. cummings, i carry your heart with me

(59 votes, average: 3.34 out of 5)

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This was submitted by Chealsye.

I adore Vonnegut, and got this tattoo roughly two months after a serious two year relationship ended. The break-up drove me into depression, and near suicide. When I informed my ex’s best friend I had to stop speaking with him, he responded with the quote. Most people see it when I wear dresses and inquire about it, but never fully get it. Sometimes, weeks later, they will tell me they finally really get it, not just what it means to me, but what it means to them too. But for the ones who do not fully get it, they will one day, unfortunately. I believe it takes a lot of hurt, a death or the dying of something important to make someone understand. So it goes.

This was posted as a part of “So it Goes” Saturdays.  The phrase “so it goes” appears in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five 116 times.  Can you help me collect 116 “so it goes” tattoos?  7 down, 109 to go.

(46 votes, average: 3.48 out of 5)

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