The Tattoo Poem by Carsten Thomsen

Wearing little
but pants
a grin and cigar
you laughed
out loud
your crazy grin.
Your arms covered
in scars
and
gang tattoos
from your
colorful past.
Still embedded in arm;
a bullet,
and in your head
the story
of how
and when
and why
Seeing you there
staggering drunk
in the pale
pre dawn light
I wonder:
are you drinking
because its Friday
or to forget
the naked cement floor
under your soles,
the roaches and rats
in the ally,
a tattoo that reads love
eternal

like me?