Everything was tattooed

Everything was tattooed on my taboo skin,
Ghosts from outside, ghosts within
Ghosts of color - paled, impaled
Ravishing grotesqueness, unleashed when veiled

Everything was tattooed with needles grinding-
Muscle and bone but never finding
No crimson shores to fill my pails
With rising crags and falling dales

Everything was tattooed as everything must
Be it colored with memory or rendered on dust
Everything must be tattooed or else-
Let’s all just shrink to be lonely cells.