Thank you for helping me realize what worthless trash I am [poem]
by Dan Pham

 
Though she paints like Benzaiten*
Lurita's phony friends, behind her back
Say she is a terrible tattoo artist;
  That she's slammed the door in the face of her miniscule costumers
  that her weak tiny hands shake at the table
  that she's always looking down at her scraped-up chuck taylors
  that she's never even had a fuck before
 

But in a fetish for pain, maybe hope
There were always those who held Lurita's hand
  to see how long they could survive under her needle,
  to be the first to have beauty inked into their backs,
But as predicted every time,
At the session's end,
Those men received mutilated,
  skinny bodies in exchange.

 
And always
To the lacerations put to the men's carved-up shoulder blades,
Lurita's phony friends simply replied, "I told you so;
  "you should have spent your money
  "at another parlor entirely
  "not wasted time on mangled style which loves like rust.
  "now what have you to show for it?
  "coarse and leprous scabs bending
  "under the sides of your abdomen.
The fools' skin stings under cold sheets
The cracking tissue bleeding into the morning
  as their dreams of being a hero turn them over in bed...

 
But while Lurita may be inexperienced,
To be fair, those present hunchbacks are no heroes
Oh god no.

 
While Lurita's phony friends
Snicker at how young men's soft tender backs have turned into
Calloused reptilian skin that tenses their spines,
Under one tattoo artist's artistry
Each man feels the same,
And if they were given the chance to face Lurita again
This is what they'd say:

  under your needle, Lurita
  i had hoped that your inspiration could have
  made me beautiful too,
  but it was my own twisted flesh
  that led you to cut me down;
  I was not the blank canvas you had hoped for
  growing up wincing
  with frail bones
  dense as winter sparrows
 
  what you made of me was there before
  and i did not assimilate
  with the tapestry you stenciled against my skeleton;
  instead, what matched--
  what matched what you had inked into my skin--
  was the unstoppable marring of my body
  throughout the arc of my bowed-over back,
  necrotic tissue eating muscle,
  a moist black jelly

 
  nearly human
  you are beautiful, Lurita
  turning men into monsters

*the Japanese goddess of music and fine arts