Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos

Tattoo from The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein:

Submitted by Carly Neely:

This is the carving the little boy etches into the tree. He later carves in another but that one is removed when he cuts down the trunk of the tree. This carving always remains til the end.
I always related to the giving tree. I think a lot of people misinterpret the story. It’s sad. There’s a lot of pain in loving someone so much who is busy not loving you back like the little boy, but whenever the boy returns, the tree is happy, and that’s all that matters to her at the end of the day.

Submitted by Jessyintheskywithdiamonds:

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

Submitted by Katie:

I got the tattoo when I was going through a series of events I ended up losing a large number of those who were close to me. I got to a point where I was absolutely miserable and couldn’t find a good reason to wake up in the morning. I work in dorms and during my hard times some of my residents who I’d helped quite a bit throughout the year saw through my “I’m fine”’s and would come to me and would talk to me about all the different ways I’d helped them. In the midst of everything piling up it just reminded me that despite whatever BS I’ve gone through if I’m still able to wake up in the morning and help make someone else’s life better then my own will always have meaning. (The little flurries you see around the text are from a dandelion that’s on my back.)

Submitted by Heather Sundell:

Shel Silverstein was a huge part of my childhood. I was in love with his poems and his writing has greatly influenced my own. I loved this poem because it reminds me that there is always more to life than what you know . I also actually typed this on my grandmothers ancient typewriter. Also…it’s just pretty effin’ rad.

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

- Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein

From The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.

This tattoo was submitted by Kay.

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.

- From ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas

This tattoo was submitted by dylan Snow, who says:

Years ago when I showed this tattoo to my grandmother (who once kicked a man out of her house for having an earring) she told me she approved. It was her grandmother’s favorite poem and favorite poet.

Submitted by Doc Luben:

I’m with you in Rockland
where you laugh at this invisible humor
I’m with you in Rockland
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter
I’m with you in Rockland
where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio
I’m with you in Rockland
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

- Excerpt from Allen Ginsberg’s Howl (full text)

» Read more after the jump →

“For love—I would
split open your head and put
a candle in
behind the eyes.”

- From Robert Creeley’s poem The Warning

This tattoo was submitted by Sarah, who says:

Below it is a tiny outline of the Buffalo, NY skyline - it’s the city where I grew up, and the city that haunts me wherever I go. Creeley is a Buffalo poet and I felt that his words were fitting considering my passion for the place.

One night a man had a dream. He dreamt he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints on the sand — one belonging to him and the other to the Lord. When the last scene had flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints and he noticed only one set. He also noticed that this happened during the lowest and saddest times of his life. This bothered him and he questioned the Lord. “Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you would walk all the way with me, but I noticed that during the most troublesome times of my life there was only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why, when I needed you most, you deserted me.”

The Lord replied, “My precious child, I love you and would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, those were the times when I carried you in my arms.”

- Footprints by Mary Stevenson

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This is my 100th post! Thank you to everyone who has been visiting the site since it launched in April. And don’t forget to submit your own tattoos!

“Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.”

- from Meditations at Lagunitas by Robert Hass

(source)

The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands & feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish’d every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox. he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement, are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ’d.
Enough! or Too much.

- Excerpt from “Proverbs of Hell” in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

(source)

All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
Layin’ in the sun,
Talkin’ ’bout the things
They woulda coulda shoulda done…
But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas
All ran away and hid
From one little Did.

- Woulda Coulda Shoulda by Shel Silverstein (from Falling Up)

(source)

be of love (a little) more careful
than of everything
guard her perhaps only
A trifle less (merely beyond how very)
closely than nothing
remember love by frequent
anguish (imagine
her least never with most
memory)
give entirely each
forever its freedom

(dare until a flower,
understanding ceaselessly sunlight
open what thousandth why and
discover laughing)

- e. e. cummings, be of love (a little)

(source)

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

- from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

(source)

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

(source)

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

- Excerpt from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

(source)

you said Is
there anything which
is dead or alive more beautiful
than my body,to have in your fingers
(trembling ever so little)?
Looking into
your eyes Nothing,i said,except the
air of spring smelling of never and forever.

….and through the lattice which moved as
if a hand is touched by a
hand(which
moved as though
fingers touch a girl’s
breast,
lightly)
Do you believe in always,the wind
said to the rain
I am too busy with
my flowers to believe,the rain answered

- you said Is by e.e. cummings

(source)

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.

One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten
million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

My foothold is tenon’d and mortis’d in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

- Excerpt from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

(source)

From The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein.

(source)

all theories
like clichés
shot to hell,
all these small faces
looking up
beautiful and believing;
I wish to weep
but sorrow is
stupid.
I wish to believe
but belief is a
graveyard.
we have narrowed it down to
the butcherknife and the
mockingbird.
wish us
luck.

- No Title by Charles Bukowski

(source)