The first three hours don’t hurt, but
the last two hundred do. The tattoo
table holds me taut, my endorphins
radiating temporary highs. Turns out
tempered resilience outlasts regimes.

Bio-inked-needles cycle from scratches
into scraping metal on skin, as they
create on me a stunning horror.

Scalp to toenail, bioluminescent tattoos
coat my body, skin turned an emotional
color wheel by vibrant self-illuminating
polychromatic purples & pinks & then
aquas & ambers. Bioluminescence spells
out in abstract typography each word
of their one-sided written constitution.

The government language I defied
now emblazes my every living cell.

For eleven years I graffitied willing skin
& on receptive concrete anti-State,
wholesome revolutionary action.

Caught beautifying an agricultural college’s
admin building, they shipped me away
twenty lightyears, threw me into a prison
box somewhere in the spiral arm’s capital.

Now here I live, within a glass box jail
in the middle of buzzing downtown.

I’m a captivating art piece on display,
a breathing neon propaganda sign
producing its own light to illuminate
a sadistic incarcerator’s idioms.

I’m a model who no one loves. I have no
long, horizontal runway below me, merely
vertical glass panes & gawkers inspecting
vivid tattoos only bright through my skin
because of the endless battle between my
immune system & embedded phosphorus.

Children come up & read my skin,
cock their heads, snicker while learning
only the value of human advertising.

At night I’m furnished a tattoo machine
along with tech to upkeep their artwork.
Forced to craft my own light, my own hope,
I secretly infuse each tattoo with bioelectric
transmitters powered by body heat & muscle.

Anyone near with a wireless receiver
will hear my body scream, “hack me—
come rewrite their displayed laws.”

I was ordered to showcase these colored scars
in public humiliation, as if revealing my only value.

Soon instead, I’ll display how to rewrite society.