This weekend my boyfriend and I are going to Hell City Tattoo Festival in Columbus Ohio. To our benefit, both of us are pretty seasoned when it comes to spending multiple days at a tattoo event, and we both boast volumes of skin art all over our bodies. When it comes to the tattoo culture; and I’m not going to even discuss the current state or rather the current “fad” of tattoo culture ie: Miami Ink, LA Ink, the Rockabilly and Pin Up Culture – instead – when it comes to the meat and potatoes of my link with the culture in many ways it is deeply connected to my love for poetry.

When I actually sit down and consider my writing, I am struck instantly by my own personal and overwhelming affliction with symbolism. In many ways I have found my inability to escape symbolism as perhaps the largest hindrance toward my advancement as a poet. Though through all the trails and error I am driven constantly by the motivation that lies in the metaphor, the imagery, the core movements of my own interior working itself to the surface; wholly and unapologetically symbolic.

I often hate when I have to explain my tattoo work. It’s personal – though I understand the contradiction of having artwork so available on my skin that of course I’ve laid the groundwork for those questions. Yet, the reason I hate having to explain my work is that it often feels like a draft of a poem. I am already at the end, and somewhere at the beginning, but the lines are all blurred together – and there is always room for something else to creep in and “mean” something.

Symbolism is a currency that has spent itself in ink, over my arms, my legs, my torso – yet the language that I expend is not as easily translated. When I come home from tattoo conventions I am always a little more aware of the creativity and innate compulsion we have as human beings to use expression as a guidebook or a road map.