CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith for the Years of Winter… ©
Lest any folks who believe
the Bible literally think the following poem has nothing to do with religion, I
remind you of Leviticus 19:28, “You shall not make…any tattoo marks on
yourself.” Or if you think certain words are not quite appropriate, either for
a faith blog or Valentine’s Day…you are right, but prophets have always had to
push the point to get warnings across to old people…
THE GIRL WITH NO TATTOO-A poem of warning for Val’s Day
There is a girl so lovely,
a girl so passing fair,
a girl with ripe and rosy
cheeks, a girl with golden hair,
a girl who has a form
divine, with a voice like morning dew,
but she’ll never get a man
for she’s the girl with no tattoo.
She doesn’t have some neat
barbed wire or the Chinese sign for soup,
she doesn’t have a
crucifix or the hangman’s loop,
she doesn’t wear a doggy’s
face or a lightning bolt from God,
how will she ever get a
man with no ink upon her bod?
She doesn’t have a chance,
she doesn’t have a clue,
for she doesn’t have an
image of a cute ghost saying Boo
upon her lower abdomen or
on her throat so fair.
She doesn’t even have a
kitty on her derriere.
You can’t know what she’s
thinking if it’s not written on her ass.
You’ve got to see her
thigh confession when she goes to mass,
You don’t know if she’s
weak or if she’s getting bolder.
You don’t know if she
loves her child unless it’s written on her shoulder.
She doesn’t have a smokin’
Harley or a skull and crossbones flag,
tattooed upon her biceps
or where she’s gonna sag,
when she gets a little
older and little children run in fear,
when they see the sloppy
sloshing of her inked-on mug of beer.
She doesn’t have a blue
bird or tyrannosaurus rex.
She doesn’t have a hairy
angel or a scary witch’s hex,
She doesn’t have a running
bird that slays coyotes and says beep,
How can she ever get a man
when her beauty’s not skin-deep?
They say it’s in the eye
of the beholder, where beauty does reside,
even a girl who is a
Yooper can be a blushing bride, [1]
but it’s hard to see
appeal on skin where no one drew,
how can there be a spot of
beauty on a girl with no tattoo?
They say that ink’s an art
form, that you’ve no soul without a tatt,
with no Cupid on your
buttocks you’re just Cassatt without the hat. [2]
They say it is an art
form, that those without it have no soul,
because upon your bum there
are no cherries in a bowl.
Jackson Pollock would have
made it, but he didn’t have a tatt,
so would that Picasso guy,
but his biceps were too flat,
to show a vase of flowers,
or even “Mother,” dear,
instead his puny arms just
painted people strange and queer.
Yes, she is quite lovely,
yes her life is really rich,
but she’ll never get a man
without some art apprich.
She doesn’t sport a
swarthy pirate on a coral reef,
she’s just an empty palette,
she’s got no bas relief.
She does not have some
purple grapes all clustered and all viney,
she is so completely
without class there’s no art upon her heiny.
She may be a doctor or in
a business that ends with Inc,
but she’ll not break the
glassy ceiling unless she has some ink.
She surely is a lesbian or
maybe something worse,
perhaps she is a commie,
or a writer of blank verse,
maybe she’s from Kenya or
she may be a Jew,
you cannot know the faith
or creed of a girl with no tattoo.
She doesn’t sport a
dragon, she doesn’t have a dagger,
she wears no colored
crucifix or a likeness of Mick Jagger,
she does not display Bugs
Bunny or near-sighted Mr. Magoo,
she’s the existential
loser, the girl with no tattoo.
Her life’s so inefficient,
how awful no one knows,
when
she wants to show you how she feels, she
has to put on clothes.
It
would be much more effective for her to tell you how she felt
if
she had an upraised finger forever on her pelt.
I must be a loser, I must
be a nerd,
I must be the most
pathetic man in this strange graphic world,
I must be a crazy fool
who’s brain has gone coo-coo,
for I’m the Valentine’s
Day lover of the girl with no tattoo.
JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
I tweet as yooper1721.
1] Yooper refers to a
citizen of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, UP. The idea that a Yooper girl might
not be a blushing bride is because brides there must wear parkas and
snowshoes at their June weddings.
2] Artist Mary Cassatt is
always pictured wearing a big hat.
I started this blog
several years ago, when we followed the grandchildren to the “place of winter,”
Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula [The UP]. I put that in the
sub-title, Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of
Winter, where life is defined by winter even in the summer! [This phrase is
explained in the post for March 20, 2014.] The grandchildren, though, are grown
up, so in May, 2015 we moved “home,” to Bloomington, IN, where we met and
married. It’s not a “place of winter,” but we are still in winter years of the
life cycle, so I am still trying to understand what it means to be a follower
of Christ in winter…
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