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Copyright Seeing it First Hand 2026 | Theme by ThemeinProgress
Written by jackbrewis
for Kari Jeppesen… I sat on the broken porch steps with a warm beer going flat between my knees, watching that mangy cat nailing the sparrow mid-air like it was nothing. the bird hit the concrete still flapping, one wing bent wrong, blood already leaking from its beak. cat pinned it gentle, almost tender, then […]
the body, broken like a sack of bones and meat dropped from the sky, floating quietly on the flat, endless sea beneath a low grey sky—no ripple, no hurry, just the slow swell lifting and lowering him, gentle as a sigh. no fight left, no scream, no prayer. he drifted like a cork, arms out,
clothes pegs hung in a long sad line on the wire, the thin silver line stretched across the backyard of the world like some endless railroad track to nowhere, and there they are, those little wooden people, those clipped-up saints, dancing to the secret jazz of the morning breeze, rocking to and fro, back and
there I was, rattling along on through the grey English drizzle, the underground tube train clicking under my feet, when I spotted her across the aisle—dark hair falling wild, eyes like midnight streets—and I leaned over, heart beating that crazy beat, and asked if I could take a photo of her, just a quick one
it blows in, that sour stink from the bins, drifting lazy past Tournament House, slipping down the alleyway like some old ghost of the city, rolling right onto platform 7 at Paddington station, where the trains howl and the people rush in the endless movement of coming and going. he’s leaning there against a cold
In the bruised cathedral of the dive, where saints of neon bleed slow crimson on the walls, I sit beside the ghost of Uncle Patrick—silent, eternal—his Campari glowing like a ruby heart torn fresh from some old wound. The smoke hangs in veils, a funeral lace for dead afternoons, and the glass trembles between his
it’s closing time again and the “Road to Riches” machine is coughing up its last cheap mercy, some neon one-armed slot-machine in a Transvaal dive that smells of stale Castle Lager and broken dreams. You feed it coins like you feed a whore lies, and it shits back a plastic cup of rand coins, clatter-clatter-clatter,
they threw money at you once, from the iced-up bow of the Mary Jane, some drunk tourist boat full of assholes with cameras, snapping away at your big, beautiful bulk sliding through the water like a blue dream on a good day when the bottle’s half-full. photography clicks, oohs and fucking aah, love pouring out
this fucking heat won’t quit, sweat pooling in every crease of this rotten carcass, another nightmare—third one this week—crawling out of the sheets like a rat with its throat cut. I can’t even remember what the dream was, I just remember that high-pitched whine in my skull when I snapped awake, nothing else breaking the
half-dead, sprawling out on this jolting train bearing me ever westward toward Wales, my mind spitting out its shoddy fairground movie in protest at the acrid rancid garbage smell that seeps back from the direction of the toilet at the end of the otherwise empty carriage in front of me. up all night at the
Christmas again, Jesus, another one. London’ East End. Her heels stab the wet pavement like they’re trying to kill it, clack-clack, clack-clack, some secretary’s last fuck-you to the day. Everybody running for the Underground or the pub, same difference: heat, noise, cheap beer that tastes like rust and lament. Peanuts in cloudy glasses, napkins soaked
2:45 in the goddamn morning, sitting with an empty coffee mug and the crumbs of a biscuit packet, scattered like dead soldiers on Shayne and Martin’s kitchen table. three of those bastards, maybe four—I lost count somewhere between the second and the third refill—and now my mouth feels like the bottom of a birdcage and
she blew in after the lunch bells had faded, Sunday round two in the afternoon, beautiful in that white-brown whirl, dancing and floating between the aisles like some mad angel in the vortex air of the slow train rumbling toward London. suspended there, afloat in the jazz of the rails, she drifted into the baggage
on my table in my little pub— yesterday’s paper screaming about Blair’s little love note to Bush (Tony, I’ll hold your coat while you blow up the world), a warm gin and tonic sweating like a guilty priest, and a tin of cashews gone soft because who gives a fuck. the country pretends it’s shocked.
two days in my bedroom, and the walls begin to close in on me. empty cans of super-strength lager stacked on the desk catch the light like cheap gold trophies. I smoke my Lucky Strikes, and the place is heavy with that blue, blessed haze. I’m either pounding away on this typewriter or flat on
lovers paint hearts into the frost and ice on windscreens, their breath fogging up the glass like cheap sex in a doorway. rain drizzles down, soft and useless, on rows of scooters hunched in the alley, seats glazed with ice, waiting for some fool to come along and chip it off with a credit card
and the buzzer short-circuits like a mad trumpet in the wires, brrrrap-brrrrap-brrrrap, amplified blasts ripping down the quiet hallway, salvo after salvo bursting into the black night outside, echoing off the peeling walls. and she’s there, right on time, bang on the dot, and his gut twists with that old primal howl for love and
it was Sunday, early evening sliding down slow and golden over the rooftops, the whole suburb breathing quiet like it knew something was coming apart next door, and there I was in my little garden, hearing them, that couple tearing into each other with screams that went on endless, raw rage ripping out of their
the horn blows wild — tidal wave, six to one, 3:35 sharp, the bell clangs like a drunk monk in the rain, and there she goes, the grey ghost streaking over Sandown’s green lung, that lush emerald breathing under hoof and sky. punters lean into the dream, eyes wild, pounding hearts against the rail while
only the finest manila rope, the good stuff you bought at the hardware store on Commercial Road, singing its little dry creak up there in the rafters like a drunk humming off-key. you, dangling in the middle of your one-room shithole, toes pointed south, shame finally heavier than the rest of you. Nina Simone on
the pictures hit him like a cheap whiskey burn— straight to the gut, no chaser. one showed a Jewish boy, maybe ten, drowning in those striped rags, the yellow star sewn on like a target for every drunk with a rifle. another was nothing but bones twisted wrong and black smoke crawling out of chimneys
there she is behind the marked oak bar, that Irish angel with the black hair falling like midnight rain, serving up the warmest smile you ever saw, pulling a perfect pint, slow and creamy, her eyes shining like some ancient goddess, yes, like Dionysus himself in drag, pouring out the madness. red wine flowing free
the room, this fucking dormitory cist, one bed like a slab they forgot to bury me in, two chairs that nobody sits on, and a corner window that stares out at nothing. solitude, the old whore, she climbs in bed with you every night, whispers the same tired shit in your ear until you almost
I need something else, something other than the low-down hum of silence that’s blowing through my wide-awake bedroom like the ghost of all the roads I never took, the heater dead, the night frozen stiff at six below zero. I’m lying here in this fever-cabin with the taste of my favourite Mexican restaurant, Las Iguanas,
Gare de Lyon, that big bastard of a station, spits you out into Le Train Bleu, all that gold-plated bullshit from the old days hanging there like a drunk’s memories, chandeliers dripping light on the suckers below, paintings of green fields nobody ever worked because they were too busy screwing the maid. tonight, the place
did you just die there in the night? I can’t hear those wild wings anymore, that frantic beating gone silent like a jazz riff cut short in some dim basement club. you were drunk on pure panic, bashing your tiny skull against the cheap IKEA lamp I got last week, that blinding circle of false
Hyde Park on a Sunday when the sun’s got its boot on your neck. kids on plastic scooters scraping the hot concrete like they’re trying to file the day down to nothing. bicycles with training wheels squeaking through the legs of mums and dads who just want a bench before the ice cream turns to
he dressed wild as a dream in those striped trousers flashing like railroad tracks under the sun, top hat bowler perched crazy on his head, long coat flapping in the wind off the river, gaudy shirt blooming colours like some mad flower in the grey city streets, eyeglasses swinging on a silver chain, clinking soft
the hubcaps — those gleaming silver nomads of the tar, holy rollers deserting me like faithless friends hitching rides to wilder horizons. they vanish into the luminous night or the blistering noon, tumbling free while I loop the same grimy industrial estate, the same sharp corners, unravelling slow like a bad dream I can’t shake.
there I was, sprawled out in the dim light of my room, bottle half-empty on the floor, the booze swimming hot in my veins, deep despair rolling over me in waves, and I thought of Doctor Kazinski in the East End, his little practice with the cracked linoleum and the waiting room that smelled of
My appointment with Doctor Faustus, Clinical Psychologist. I’m sunk deep in this old armchair, the one with the springs poking through like bad memories, and the room’s half-lit, half-dead, snow still spitting against the window. the clock’s oak pendulum swings back and forth, steady as a hangover heartbeat, counting me out. I’m just letting go,
I stand here pissing in this narrow shithole of a toilet, staring up through the little slit of a window at a sky the colour of a dead man’s face. little worms of light wriggle across my vision, cheap vodka and cheaper dreams doing their slow dance in the bloodstream. smells like the inside of
blow by blow, the drummer’s foot stomps that pedal like she’s kicking the world in the ribs, cymbals crashing silver in the dim, hi-hat chick-chick-chick in a wild solo to nowhere and everywhere. there she plays under the hot spotlight, the girl with brushes or sticks or her furious heart, beating it out, while the
Maharaj and Co. General Suppliers, Established 1888. the floor, beat-to-shit planks of Canadian pine, scarred and grey like the skin on an old whore’s thighs, been there since the clippers came in heavy with tea from the east. sailors with arms like dock ropes drag crates, sweat cutting channels through the grime on their necks,
and so the boy tormented them day after day, those natives on the hot African farm, pushing them until they wouldn’t even bring his tea and biscuits anymore, hands trembling at the thought of him, that pale cruel child with his secret games. sometimes he’d palm it quick under his hand or slide it up
the night moves quiet, no goddamn noise, no mercy—just MK slipping through the shadows like a drunk looking for one last bottle, decreed from some exile hole, dragging the armed fight deep into those white zones where the streetlights quit years ago, and the spear of the nation slides in clean, a rusty blade shoved
she stood there in those beat-up boots, laces knotted like some half-assed noose, shawl hanging off her shoulders the way a drunk hangs off a barstool—loose, tired, ready to slide off and die. out ahead, the lake was frozen solid, a big, grey nothing staring back at her, the closest thing to forgiveness she’d ever
it was a big bastard project the first time I saw the house, the kind of dumb hope you buy when you still believe in forever. the front fence—cast iron, 1940s, rising off brick columns like it owned the street. proud. solid. untouched by the rot that had claimed everything else. I made the rust
the sky over Jesus Green is one big hangover, black and bloated, hanging there like a drunk who won’t leave the bar. it’s waiting, holding, ready to let it all go in one grand pathetic flood. then it starts. I look up through the shitty streetlight that’s got a sign dangling off it—faulty, please report—like
those were the days when nothing hurt yet, pedalling like a dumb kid through the maize fields of Southern Africa, dust choking the air, wire fences ripping at your legs if you got too close, the sun baking everything into one long stupid dream. then bam, over the handlebars, eating dirt, picking bloody gravel out
