New poem: Tattoos

I had a thought that I would be the last person

in London who didn’t have a tattoo. I was looking

in the window of a tattooing place and saw a sign

that said, ‘Tattoos: seen, foreseen and unseen’.

I went in and said to the man, ‘Excuse me but

your sign, ‘Tattoos: seen, foreseen, and unseen’

what’s that about?’

He said, ‘A tattoo that’s seen is one that you can

see. A tattoo that’s foreseen is one that you choose

which people you want to see it. A tattoo that’s

unseen is one you can’t see.’

‘I get the ‘seen’ tattoos,’ I said, ‘but what’s this

foreseen one, how does that work?’

‘They’re digitally pre-arranged tattoos, so they

can only be seen by the people you choose.’

Wow,’I said.

‘There’s an app on phones now,’ he said, ‘which we

hook up to. The app does it. You programme in

who you want to see your tattoo. I’ve got a tattoo

here,’ he said pointing to his arm, ‘now you can’t

see a tattoo there, but now look on this phone,

and there - see - a tattoo.’

‘Well, actually, I can’t.’

‘Oh, well, it’s just booting up...but you will,’ he said.

‘Great,’ I said, ‘I can think of a lot of uses for that.

Now, the other one, unseen tattoo, is that one that’s

hidden, like- under your clothes or something?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s one that no one can see.’

‘You mean, it’s somewhere private?’ I said

‘No, no, it’s an invisible tattoo,’ he said,’we do

the tattoo, anywhere on the client, but no one can

see it. I’ve got one here,’ he said and pointed to

his arm. ‘See that,’ he said, ‘you can’t see that

can you?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s perfect. I can’t see a thing.’