Steve, best left to the reader's lurid imagination! Yes, you've noticed I'm plotless with this one. I will substitute

And thereby met his noisome Waterloo
When, wits awash with whisky, roaring drunk,
He sank his needle in a friend's pet skunk.

Not much better clincher-wise, though. Maybe a bettter competition would be trying to supply the wording or design that Bazza would now be baring on the beach if his tattooist had been less scrupulous.

They came to me with little sense
believing in love's permanence
and trusting my ungainly art
to brand them with a name or heart.
How many thousands later rued
the images that I tattooed?
My guess is far more than a few.
Love fades. Unlike a good tattoo.
.
.
.

Roger, may I salute a beautiful little poem. Oh, and suggest you spell tattoo right, you Keats, you!

Roger, I would kill to have written that.

Thanks, guys. I never enjoyed writing a poem more, since I wrote it in my head while splashing in the ocean on a beautiful sunny day, and neither my wife nor my son seemed to notice my distraction.

I've enjoyed all the poems posted here so far, and I suspect we'll see several take prizes.

Igualmente, Roger. Nice one. Revised version of mine coming up. My friend W. tells me Lady G. actually has up to 6 tattoos, including a quote from Rainer Maria Rilke. You couldn' t make it up . . . perhaps I should change her to Paris Hilton.