Tattooing Ourselves at School

Do you remember the day we tattooed
ourselves at school? We huddled within
our homemade shelter, lidded desk

unfolded before us. Our skin cut
by my compass that never knew its purpose,
had danced along every desk, punctured

the drinks of other kids, ruined
skirts and pencil cases. We scratched
our arms, swore our truths and smeared

the ink in. Ink from a pen’s
endoskeleton, its plastic lung,
its hospital tube, intravenous blue lake.

Ripped out and opened, its insides spread
along our shivering shells, blocking
pores and filling the rill we’d carved.

There lay two whose names were writ
in ink. That handmade sign signified
our lives, our loves and our beliefs,

truer and longer lasting than our schoolboy
seriousness, even if the ink
had seeped into our shirts by then,

fading already, forgotten by lunchtime.

 

 

 

Jason Monios is originally from Australia, and recently moved to France after many years in Scotland. His poetry publications include Magma, The North, Gutter, Acumen, Poetry Scotland, New Writing Scotland, Southbank Poetry, Envoi, The Fenland Reed, Northwords Now, The SHOp, The Warwick Review and The Guardian.