He Wore It to Assert, with Fierce Devotion, Complicity and Nothing More

So, Bleggal Year 2013-2014. Look at those blogrolls - even by past standards of Blog Days of Summer slowdown, Blegsylvania is dead. Oh well, this is my preferred method of self-aggrandizement: I use twitter, I don't want to be twitter; I tried tumblr, if I can't count how much I'm ignored, fuck that. I am also, apparently, the oldest dope in Blegsylvania, yes, it's a weekend during the Blog Days of Summer but NOBODY I've seen has mentioned the death of Jean Stapleton, All in the Family and Edith Bunker major cultural touchstones once upon a time, youngsters. Dealing with information overload? Peeping Thomism. Maggie's weekly links. Overlay. Why we should care about Occupy Gezi. Hey, I was watching footage Turkish riots & police response, was reminded me how bigoted I am to once have believed that Turkish cops act more barbarian than US cops. New Inquiry's Sunday links. Don't demonize me, bro. Poetry trading cards? Sylvia Plath reads fifteen of her poems. { feuilleton }'s weekly links. A PDF of Muriel Spark's Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Iconography. Crime fiction and capitalist society. How word verification works. The library and its uses. Stephin Merritt interview, talks Future Bible Heroes. And study them one afternoon before they wilted.






BLACK JACKETS

Thom Gunn

     In the silence that prolongs the span
Rawly of music when the record ends,
     The red-haired boy who drove a van
In weekday overalls but, like his friends,

     Wore cycle boots and jacket here
To suit the Sunday hangout he was in,
     Heard, as he stretched back from his beer,
Leather creak softly round his neck and chin.

     Before him, on a coal-black sleeve
Remote exertion had lined, scratched, and burned
     Insignia that could not revive
The heroic fall or climb where they were earned.

     On the other drinkers bent together,
Concocting selves for their impervious kit,
     He saw it as no more than leather
Which, taut across the shoulders grown to it,

     Sent through the dimness of a bar
As sudden and anonymous hints of light
     As those that shipping give, that are
Now flickers in the Bay, now lost in night.

     He stretched out like a cat, and rolled
The bitterish taste of beer upon his tongue,
     And listened to a joke being told:
The present was the things he stayed among.

     If it was only loss he wore,
He wore it to assert, with fierce devotion,
     Complicity and nothing more.
He recollected his initiation,

     And one especially of the rites.
For on his shoulders they had put tattoos:
     The group's name on the left, The Knights,
And on the right the slogan Born To Lose.