The Tattooed Poets Project: Lorraine Conlin

Today's tattooed poet is Lorraine Conlin, one of several Long Island wordsmiths featured this month on the Tattooed Poets Project.

Lorraine offers up this beautiful tattoo on the upper right side of her back:

Photo courtesy of Lorraine Conlin

Lorraine gives us the background of this lovely La:

"My first and only tattoo (so far), was self-designed with a bit of enhancement by Syxx, of Wyld Chyld Tattoo in Merrick, NY, where I co-host poetry events in their adjoining café.  La is the Lilliputianized form of my original nickname, Lala.  Before I said Mama or Dada, as most babies do, I uttered Lala and from that day forward, my family referred to me as their “little Lala”. 

Photo courtesy of Lorraine Conlin

The name stayed with me and friends and business associates starting calling me “La”.  While hosting the open mic at Wyld Chyld Tattoo & Café, I met Syxx, (Raymond Obrien) who is with the Metal Group, “The Saints of Pain”.  He signed up to read one night and read something he had written.  We started talking and I asked if I had any ink.  I told him I was afraid of infection and I was allergic to lots of foods and meds. He asked me which ones and when I said sulfur, he said I could get any colors except yellow or any that had yellow in their composition.  He was so reassuring, knowledgeable and gentle that I went home that night and started thinking about what to get and where I wanted it.  I sketched it out and brought him the sketch.  We made a date, he made the stencil and the rest is history."

Lorraine was kind enough to share this poem with us: 

A Wannabe Fantasy

I told my shrink I wannabe a back warmer

sit on a bitch pad behind a biker guy

wrap my arms round his ape-hanger grip

straddle his bar-hopper bike on Friday nights

ride with a big bearded chromosexual guy

cruise the big road to nowhere…

I wanna goggle the horizon -- eat asphalt

let my puppies hang loose

wear black leather chaps

and a purple skid lid

“I don’t think you do.” He said

Yes, I do

I love bikers

especially the B.U.G.s

the bigger, uglier the guy

the harder they try

the better they make me feel

told him I rode hard and long with a few

before these confession sessions

He said. “We have to stop now.”

I found a new therapist

she loves to listen

to my biker-chick fantasies

rides along with me

always asks

“How does that make you feel”…

~ ~ ~

Lorraine Conlin is a US Customs Broker at JFK Airport. She is on the BOD of The Long Island Poetry Collective, hosts “Tuesdays With Poetry” for Poets in Nassau, and co-hosts for PerformancePoets Association at Wyld Chyld Tattoo & Café in Merrick, LINY. Her work has been published in PPA Literary Review(s), LongIsland Sounds Anthology(s).  Lorraine initiated and hosts Super Poem Sunday, where folks gather to celebrate the sport of poetry on Super Bowl Sunday.  She is also the founder of the Long Island Poets for Darfur.  Lorraine is currently working on her first book of poems.

Thanks to Lorraine for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

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