All the tattoos I want

I’ve decided that I want a japanese tattoo sleeve
starting at the shoulder
and ending at the wrist.
It will include at least a koi fish,

some kanji, a samurai sword, some nice blue
waves, a pokemon (not sure which yet, but hell maybe I’ll get two),

probably a torii, probably something small
in dedication to yu yu hakusho (not sure what). I don’t have all

the ideas yet but it will at least
be very colorful and with basically no skin color showing. And my back piece

will be dedicated to egyptian mythology;
specifically Horus and Anubis facing each other
and some nice looking egyptian-like images in the background
to bring it all together.

And honestly that’s all the tattoos I want.

A post on the White Morgan Freeman Tumblr, 20 May 2012. By Ezra.

Re-Verse

Redira second in defensive digs –
Retain Potter.

Dumpster fire scorches bookstore –
Mariners set sail.

Lobster too good to eat –
Zuckerberg has the world by the tail.

Corrections/Clarifications
Dead man awakens at funeral.

Plan to revive economy –
Free public workshop.

Headlines in the Monterey County Herald,14 and 15 May, 2012. By Neal.

We wanted to let you know

The dog Billy died
on a rainy cold evening.
He had stopped eating
and exploratory surgery
found a long cancer.
He fitted right in with us,
his stoic cautious cooperative self.
He was with us for 5 years, perhaps half his life.
It feels very empty here today.
We lit a candle and played the Requiem
by Mozart.

An email from a friend, on the death of their dog. By Karen Greenbaum-Maya.

Hi Emily,

This is just to let u know
I love u no less than I did at school.
Maybe it’s time we both moved on,
I will always love u
no matter how this ends.

A text message sent, accidentally, to my friend Anita, May 2012. By Lynda.

The Shape of Our Rage

Gradually men rise up to confront them.
One of the bravest is
a teenage hairdresser’s apprentice.

Vidal Sassoon, the man who gave us
the Five Point Cut, the Asymmetric Bob
and Mia Farrow’s £2,500 haircut

was a street-fighting man.
“That popinjay Mosley.
Fascists preaching hate on every corner.

The same abuse that I remembered
from the 1930s,
I was too young to do anything about it.

The pictures we were seeing
from Auschwitz and Buchenwald and Dachau
changed the shape of our rage.

I went to work at the salon in Mayfair
with a badly scratched face
and this refined client said

Good God, Vidal, you look terrible.
What happened to you?
Nothing much, I said. I just fell over a hairpin.”

From an Anti-Fascists Online report following the death of Vidal Sassoon. By Jo Bell.

The smoke that thunders

Plateau forests
Of ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir,

Cypresses that creep
Far into the water.

Under the sun that never sets
Below the smoke that thunders.

From Rough Guide Ultimate Adventures, September 2008, referring to the Grand Canyon, the Atchafalaya Basin and the Arctic Victoria Falls. By Harriet.

But Not All of the Time

Any case
in which people pursue
a single great experience or accomplishment
that occurs infrequently
or perhaps not at all –

a Holy grail,
an impossible dream,
a brilliant model,
a great white whale –

is a case of
a positively skewed distribution
in which they may be
predicted to be

unhappy
most of the time.

From Social Comparison Processes: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives (1977) edited by J.M. Suls and R. L. Miller, pp. 149-186. Submitted by Kate L.

Live your dash

On your tombstone
you’ve got your birth date

and the day of your decease —
and you’ve got your dash.

Live your dash.
Hold still and watch the birds.

Like the hummingbirds —
why are there so many of them?

From the London Evening Standard’s review of Herzog’s Into the Abyss. By Rishi Dastidar.

The Name of the Father

The first time I came home
with a hangover – I was 21
or 22 – I was in the kitchen
making a cup of tea. In those days
all I drank was Guinness – my dad
leant over to me and said:
‘Do you drink spirits?’ I said:
‘No, I don’t.’ He said:
‘Don’t.’ That’s stayed with me
all my life. I don’t drink spirits
at all. It was profound because
my father was a man of
very few words but,
when he did speak,
it was emphatic.

Liam Neeson, interviewed in the Metro, 27 January 2012. By Marika Rose.