Grace, on the bus

[Silas Thorne]

"I'll get a tattoo of the word Grace
on the back of my legs near my butt,
cos my grandmother was called Grace
and I'm real graceful
and s hit,' said the girl with the mouth spouting
f uck and c unt,
who first got her first one before 13.
'People are real accepting
of tattoos these days
even in the workplace'

Maybe not though,
for her friend, still in school,
has one of Hitler, a map of Germany
and decorative swastikas.

[Hawkman]

Hi Silas. I thik you need to address the punctuation and line breaks in this one so that it would flow a bit better and be easier to get the sense of what is said.

In S1 L4 I'd put a full stop after graceful and cut the and from the befginning of L5, and I'd put a linebreak after the C word.

In S2 L3 I'd change with to has.

An acute social commentary, methinks.

Live and be well - H

[Silas Thorne]

Thanks Hawkman. Yes you are right. Still a progress in work. I'll change a few things due to your advice, though not all of them. :)

[PrinceMyshkin]

The second stanza was somewhat anticlimactic, I thought, because surely the power of Hitler/Naziism to outrage us has waned somewhat?

[Jack of Hearts]

"I'll get a tattoo of the word Grace
on the back of my legs near my butt,
cos my grandmother was called Grace
and I'm real graceful
and s hit,' said the girl with the mouth spouting
f uck and c unt,

This reader thought that this part nailed the biting impression you set out to achieve, but the rest of the work seemed to just reiterate, not contribute.

Anyways, it's definitely a curious phenomenon to observe.






J

[AuntShecky]

First of all, Silas, haven't seen you 'round these parts for a while. It's good to see you back here!

I agree w. the previous poster(s) that this piece is smart social commentary, and I couldn't agree more with the speaker's implied disdain for tattoos.

In my opinion, no matter how "beautiful" the person involved might think his or her tattoo might be, an intentional--in a way, self-inflicted-- permanent mark on one's skin is disfigurement no matter how you look on it.

Why isn't the skin which Nature gives us beautiful on its own?

Not only that --and your second stanza alludes to the point-- whenever I see a tattoo, I can't help thinking of the poor people from the 1940s who were forcibly tattooed with a number. It's beyond my comprehension why anyone would walk around with a reference to that tragic sin in the history of civilization.

[Delta40]

Are the tattoos in S2 only an outrage here in the west though? Interesting poem with food for thought.