Permanent

• Artist: Torcimento Destino
• Description: For one of my classes we read a poem (I can't remember the title or author, and I'm too lazy to dig through my school stuff to find it) and then we were asked to write a poem from the subject's point of view from the original poem. The subject in the original poem was about an old man with a tattoo. This is what I came up with. I'm not sure if I like it or not, so I'm putting it out here for your opinions. Please be honest :D
• Date: 04/18/2010
• Tags: permanent tattoo older broken mistakes

I am a man
I am a man who has lost
Everything.
I am a man
Whose mistakes
Are more permanent
Than the tattoo on my shoulder.
The bloody heart
That was once on my shoulder
Is now just a pale lump
Of skin and ink
And my mistakes
Are more permanent
Than my tattoo.
My own selfish, pride
Was my demise
And now
As I sift through
This strange man’s yard
Filled with unwanted objects
As crowded and as messy as a ghost yard of ships
That have crashed on merciless rocks
And sunk down to ominous sandy ocean floor
I realize
These broken tools
I hold in my old and wrinkled hands
Are just like me.
Once useful
Loved
And adored.
Now they are
Useless
And uncared for.
I cannot
Undo what I have done
And I cannot
Change who I have become.
So I’ll show my lump of skin and ink
And wear my old black shirt
Because my mistakes
Are more permanent than my tattoo
And I
Cannot change myself
My mistakes
Or my tattoo.
Now I’m just an old man
With a lump of skin and ink
And I am as broken
As these used and abused tools