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Tattoo Flash

from Penny Orchids by Penny Orchids

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lyrics

When Tattoo Flash was young and brash he was sent to meet the jailer
I've heard it said he killed him dead and was sentenced to hard labour
In 1810 with other bad men, board the Neptune to Australia
He returned one spring as a different thing on the body of a sailor

Now the sailor's name was Steven, a lad from Plymouth town
He'd retained his innocence though he sailed the world around
In Singapore he went ashore to mark his skin with art
The piece he chose was sinister but Steven thought it smart
It took two weeks for the piece to heal, in that time Steven changed
He turned from an innocent sailing boy, to be bitter and deranged
When they cast him off in China, the crew was ten men down
Steven Smith had killed them all, then terrorised the town

I am dust I am bones I am ink on your skin
I am evil and wrong and insane
I am lines in a book won't you give me a look
I am ink in your blood and your brain

Once there was a parlour near the new York city port
A man named Sam O'Reilly was the artist they all sought
The guvnor tattooed customers who'd come from far and wide
People from the boroughs, people swept in on the tide
When people came into the shop without a clear idea
O'Reilly showed them pieces he'd collected down the years
And so it came to pass he inked a man from Illinois
Who ended up a murdering a hundred orphan boys

In Jamaica, in Japan, in Korea and Bhutan
In New Zealand and Samoa and a hundred other lands
In a dusty book of work there lurks a glimpse of darker times
And woe betide the bastard who is drawn to that design

When Tattoo Flash was five years old, his daddy held him still
And marked the flesh of his innocent boy
With an evil as old as the hills

credits

from Penny Orchids, released December 16, 2012

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Penny Orchids UK

tall tales, tragedies, cheap sideshow distractions

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