we found a beached jellyfish beside Brighton pier.
You said it felt like a wet bicep
as you carried it over the street
and dumped it on a public telephone.
Then we planted twigs in it
and a plastic spoon
and your empty gin bottle with a picture
of a London phone box on the label,
as melting fish ran down the receiver
and dribbled into the coin slot.
We called it “Jellyphone,
or The Decline of the Uruguayan Plimsoll Industry”.
I called its number on my mobile.
Nobody answered.
The last time I was home
your lesbian friends embraced me,
bought me stilton and tequila
and pondered sperm donation.
It struck, warmed, toasted me,
that we would be surrogate brothers
if we both became uncle-fathers
of double-mothered nephew-sons or niece-daughters,
which is the only kind of father
we two islands of chaos are ever likely to be.
The last time I was home
you said you didn’t have a guitar.
I was so shocked that I bought you one,
and an amp to replace
the one you’d left at a bus-stop after six whiskeys.
You sobbed on my neck,
your wire-cloud Dravidian hair in my eyes,
and promised we would record albums together
one sunnier, less separated day.
Then the invasion of Europe kicked my head in
and forced a red pill down my throat.
Oh, to be able to go home again.
