Tattoo

 

The blue people walk supermarket aisles. A lacy cobweb funnels out of a neck, suspends along the spine. A universe wraps their calf muscle lightly, darkly. Indigo twinkles turn to timeless wrinkles around an inky ankle. Unlike watches and earrings, the blues cannot be taken off at a moment’s notice. Mermaids rest permanently on their leg, in full view. The blues keep resolutely to the point. Primarily, self-expression. A name in cursive signifies a bicep. In initials epidermis speaks the language of love time cannot easily erase. Numbers emote, remotely. A Vermeer appears, all eyes and shouldering only so much responsibility. Self is a many-splendoured thing, wiggling its cutting collage should another self see them and seize the day, surrender. Self can be a celtic knot on rotating wrist (one hour’s application) or go the full Monty in duotones (ten hours, ten days, ten months). Or the full Michelangelo, right down to the fingertips. The blue people collect their blue periods overseas. Their pink period is superseded by blue. Japan leaves a permanent impression. Aotearoa makes a mark. Une collectionneuse is a walking gallery of passport stamps. For other blue people discretion is the greater part of colour. Waves of subtlest Quink undulate below gossamer clothing. Superheroes butterfly over crosshatch landscapes bristling with regrowth. The blue people crowd into carriages. Their physical graffiti a silent motion picture-show of desires. Unfinished scenes from life are shaped, shadily, into permanence at the end of a needle. Skin deep, the animal within has risen to the surface of writhing torso. An insubstantial teardrop expresses a secret. The blue people comprise a respectable figure of the population. Hearts will always be surrounded with roses, or punctured too rapturously for words by an arrow. ‘Mum’ is somewhere around, never far from their minds. The blue people attend the tennis. Their forearm, their perfect balance, their back-step regularly a surprise. Most of us can only imagine what it’s like to be the blue people. Later in the day the blue people go to the bar. Hyperrealism sips sapphire gin. Fine lines wine and dine on signs and that’s mine, what’s yours. Or then the blue people go home, they rest with their sleeve on their heart. Like everyone, they live with their decisions, they recline on them. They wear seismograph skin that does not switch off even for something as daily deep as sleep. The moody blues sing of nights in white satin. Dreams surface beneath the dark blue universe of their city sky. A blurring remnant of stick-and-poke knits up the ragged sleeve of care.