always trying to educate myself re: elementary subjects. writers are to a large degree, I think, auto-didacts. for me school always got in the way from learning. spent most of my time at university shuffling in the stacks of the library where one discovery of a writer/writing leads to another.

thanks to visual poet Geof Huth's wonderful blog dbqp I've been paying closer attention to visual/concrete poems. last night I was looking up everything I could on Canadian visual poet jwcurry.

I still have much to learn, though I would not characterize visual and concrete poets "elementary", the word I used as an intro to this ramble, at all. but I wonder how a visual poet like Huth thinks of tattoos. could tattoos be considered visual poetry?

where I live, and I suspect in all cities of all sorts this is the same, I see many, many individuals inked. and some of them are absolutely fascinating. it is hard not to stare, for I often get caught trying to examine the work on a person only to have that person, say we are standing at a corner waiting to cross the street, give this look like what the fuck are you staring at?

but some persons have combined text and images that are a form of poetry. one guy I see all the time walking to and fro has thin lines of text, I think in English, start on each wrist and swirls upward under the sleeves of his t-shirt. and I wanna ask him what is it there written.

but the best tattoo I've seen was on a guy several years ago in line at the check-out in the local supermarket. he was an attractive man with short, neat hair just going grey, slim but tall and nicely dressed. I noticed his hands, for he had beautiful hands: like a surgeon's or pianist. and on his ring finger of his left hand was a red band delicately tattooed. I think it was a wedding band of a kind. it was the perfect counterpoint to his dress.