12. 10 Songs about Badasses

Stagger Lee - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Joey - Bob Dylan
Sonny Could Lick All Them Cats - Chuck E Weiss
Theme from Shaft - Isaac Hayes
The Boy With the Arab Strap - Belle and Sebastian
King of New York - Fun Lovin' Criminals
Psycho Killer - Talking Heads
Pinball Wizard - The Who
Rudie Can't Fail - The Clash
Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie

So, I guess there are a different types of badasses - the true badass, the hardest bastard alive who literally doesn't care about a thing, Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, the mean motherfucker named Stagger Lee etc
And there's the different type of badass, the tragic badass, the Sonny Liston, the big man who falls - in a sense the archetype of the tragic hero. The harder they come, the harder they fall, I heard a man say.
And the fall of these men is very hard to watch.

This is about big men falling, but it's quite scattergun. It mentions someone I went to school with. He wasn't a badass, as such, but he was a big man with a big, occasionally fragile ego which was interesting to watch. And I guess, on a personal level, I was thinking about the rivalry we had, of sorts, at school, and how I was in a no way a badass and wasn't a big man but that wasn't always necessary a bad thing and I had one or two other tricks.
I was also thinking about the delicacy you see at the side of a boxing ring, and just that generally hard bastards are quite often people you'd count on in a crisis, the people who'd know how to do first aid, stuff like that ...
It takes a detour into Mean Streets-y Christian imagery in the middle. The relevance of that is how Gangster Films used to be my favourite, stories of big bad men, their occasional humanity, glimpses of redemption, and their downfalls, and then they began to bore me and cared more about normal people, and how that kind of mirrors the near total erosion of my competitive edge.
I'm not sure it all makes quite enough sense, and rereading it, it's clearly just a slightly unhinged conversation with myself, but hey, what's wrong with that?

I scarce remember the names of the fighters
who made my eye twitch and lip quiver
But, Sam, sentences seem to be reforming
bold to sneak a relative clause in;
or not - the blood's running into your eye
and I've not the touch tender to wipe away.
Watch me, tho, spin this cricket ball
and I dare erase my self-mocking nickname -
that's touch, power of the hand over flame.
"You don't make up for your sins in the church" -
oh, I lost patience with believers
and cruelty's infected my gentle teasing.
I flinch at their mildest inquisitions
as if I am the Lord and God of all reason.
Herol Graham and Wayne McCullough -
look, I recall crying at Matthew Harding,
for fuck's sake, halfway through a pilgrimage
so don't tell me I've not had some lives.
Carl Thompson and Danny Williams -
look, I wept at the death of the Emperor,
so, yes, it's tininess that touches me now
and the creeping futility of off-kilter lives
but tell Sam I still flinch when a big man falls
and still well up when a big man stands tall.
And my sentences, which cost me my brutish aggression
are reforming, ready to do their own battle
and Sam, you and I were never that subtle
and I'll be upfield for one last competition.