Tattoo

[AlroyFarms]

Tattoo

It’s Diwali, the Festival of Lights
Staring up at the potbellied elephant man
I am humbled in a swaddling of butterscotch candlelight
And incense wafting through. His name is Ganesha
He sits cross-legged on a lotus throne, wears a crown
And is adorned with all things grand and purposeful
He is a demigod, and in his open palm he presents a svastika
Made with fiery red henna

I am reminded of my German grandmother
And her collection of beer steins
Vat the hell! Vat the hell!
She’d always say. She used to sell cigarettes
And alcohol to American GIs, who were out
Drinking the night before and getting stamped
With grandeur and purpose of their own
She’d hide under the bed during barrack inspections
I imagine her floating over The Berlin Wall
By hot-air balloon and sailing
Through golden arches in the sky
Land in a McDonald’s parking lot
With the smell of fry fat heavy in the air
And say…Vat the hell?

I think of the Age of Colonialism
The men who dove headfirst
Into a life of firsts
The first to see the vastness of oceans
Ancient turtles of The Galapagos
And the mysterious Moai, standing tall
Proudness etched forever in their stone visage
First to see different peoples, painted
For ceremony, for war, and for ascension of the spirit
And first to come home
And be shunned for the heathen tattoo
Hidden under the buttons of a cotton undershirt
Refused by wives, ostracized by churches
The vexation of ink

She’s telling me the story
Ganesha lost his head in a misunderstanding
And was gifted a new one. A parable of sacrifice
I ask about the svastika
She says without even a trace of German history
In her smile or sparkling eyes, nose ring
Glinting.  There must be hundreds of candles
It is a beloved symbol of good fortune

I dip my flatbread in lentils and think to myself
Not everything is at it seems

 

[quintessentone]

Finding German ancestry in one's DNA
Is such a condundrum for those who think of Hitler
But it is fact that Hitler was not German
"Vat the hell?"
Hitler was Austrian perhaps Hungarian too
So never judge a book by its cover

[AlroyFarms]