Tattoo: Neil Gaiman Poem

Burton Olivier wrote to the “Sandman” author with his plans for a Gaiman inspired tattoo. Gaiman wrote a poem called “I Will Write With Words of Fire” specially for the tattoo and asked comic book artist David Mack to design the image. The design is also being sold as a silkscreened print. Half of the proceeds will go to the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund.


The poem reads:
"I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You're the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You're my letter to desire: And you'll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You're my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends."

Neil Gaiman wrote:

"This is Burton Olivier’s back. He’s the person who wrote to me and asked if I’d write a comic for his back… and I said yes, if it could also do some good for the CBLDF. And then I asked who he’d want to draw it, and he said, David Mack. So I asked David, who also said yes.

I wrote a poem about words written to be tattooed…"