Hardly Literature

The Hardly Boys

"Riding in from the north like the Four horsemen of the Apocalypse: Famine, Death, Pestilence and Ginger"

The Hardly Boys are (in order of Shoe size):

Kevin Cadwallender

a.k.a. Captain Hardly

Bob Shields

a.k.a. John Wesley Hardly

John McCaughie

a.k.a. Ginger Hardly

Mike Dillon

a.k.a. Slim Hardly Junior

Four poems: Love on a Branch Line   |   Insufferable Romantics   |   Pilgrimage   |   My Grandad

Love on a Branch Line #1

On the metro, Baz says he's in love with the woman who says, 'Stand Clear of the doors, Please' i tell him it's a machine but he's smitten anyway. as he leaves the train he knows he'll maybe never hear that voice again, he knows he'll always 'Stand Clear' cos she's stuck in his head like the lord's prayer, like the ten times table, like an ice pick. we board another train but the voice is a man, a man who doesn't know Baz, who Baz doesn't love and he pines for her gentle reassurance and certainty. but she's unfaithful and like an answer phone hopelessly attentive to duty. she is breaking poets hearts up and down the east coast line. with a poet in every terminus and her limited vocabulary. Baz says the Tyne bridge is beautiful at sunrise and i can see regret, pulling the emergency cord, inverting timetables, return ticketing him to Newcastle in winter, when she'll be there, consistent if repetitious, and finding her at last re-enacting 'strangers on a train'. pulling in to Glasgow central Julie says there must be a woman somewhere that made that recording. but there's no romance in that, there's no romance in the attainable, it's only when you think it can never happen, that it happens. and Baz's love is pure. it is not tainted by flesh, he is not enthralled by just lust; this is spiritual, this is disembodied, like a poem outside of a poet, like the speaking clock, it's nothing personal, it's nothing rational. Julie, is finishing her white wine and slipping between tired sheets. Baz has a voice in his head like the clear white light and soon he'll be calling out her name and talking in tongues.

Captain Hardly (Kevin Cadwallender)

Insufferable Romantics

I hate these insufferable romantics
walking around, hand in hand
slobbering over each other and
drowning in each other's eyes
blind to every wrinkle and grey hair
with never a thought of the disgust
engendered by the sight of their
Geriatric Fumblings.

I hate these insufferable romantics
with their half-apologies and aphorisms.
I think I'll scream the next time I hear
'It's better the seventh time round'
or 'You're only middle-aged once'.
Death's too good for the bastards,
pretending they're still eighteen
and boasting about their latest
attack of acne.

I hate these insufferable romantics
acting as if they'd found an emerald
in this world of middens and corruption.
They've just no consideration at all
inflicting their pathetic soppiness
on those who know how to act their age.
It really ought not to be allowed:
smiling into each other's souls
as if they finally knew the answer
to every question.

I hate these insufferable romantics
Especially in the narrow nights
when the cold winds whisper
they might be right.

Slim Hardly Junior (Mike Dillon)

Pilgrimage

I want to kiss you like there's no tomorrow,
Until tomorrow starts to blush.
I want to taste it all, etcetera
And etcetera should not be rushed.
I want to share the sounds that please me -
I want to hold your... hand.
I want to lean towards the horizontal
And have you with me when I land.
I want a far from standard portion
Of fondly interwoven flesh.
I want a night of bare essentials
And a morning that's pyjama-less.
I want a curved hot water bottle
That snuggles up against my skin
And helps relieve specific tensions
In the valley of eternal sin.
I want to crawl to deeper water
Where I can practise tumble turns;
Breathe through my ears, en route to heaven,
In a plethora of carpet burns.
I want to help you rediscover
Each piece of misplaced jewellery,
Lost in alcoholic active service
So you must have been with me.
I want to walk you (slowly) to the station
But it isn't where it used to be.
lt must have moved, while in that doorway
Those children cuddled hopelessly.
I want the perfume on your pillow
To be O.V.D. and coke
And I want to give you something, extra special -
Satisfaction, at a stroke.

John Wesley Hardly (Bob Shields)

My Grandad

always wore a flat cap
indoors
he seldom went out

a pair of legs
]
twisted with arthritis
saw to that

he never bred whippets
or kept a ferret
down his trousers
like other granddads in the scheme

instead he looked after a budgie
that whistled
and a goldfish
that didn't

you needn't take them walks
he said and winked
he was always there
in his chair by the fireplace
he'd toss spent cigarettes
into our new coal-effect electric fire
and if he got caught say
looks that real, I forgot

he taught me my first poem
all twenty-odd verses
of The Inchcape Rock
till I got it off by heart

we'd play draughts or cards
for pennies
and I'd always get beat
we stopped playing
when I got old enough
to catch him cheat

his fore-arms
were as thick as Popeye's
and blotched with tattoos
from time served in the navy

he filled my head with stories
about submarines
that seemed so true
you almost believed he'd been
20,000 leagues under the sea

at the end
he couldn't catch a breath
his lungs
were as empty as his pockets

all that strength in his arms
left him
clutching at straws
he left an old gold watch chain
with a lucky charm
he'd always said was a ruby
but was really only cut glass
that
and a chair no-one sits in

Ginger Hardly (John McCaughie)

---