Putting Things in Perspective

Do you know sometimes I don’t even think Dad is dead?
He’s not,
He’s still away.

I was gone once for three years and when I came back there he was.
I don’t wish him back really I don’t.
I know he’s better off where he is.

Papua New Guinea my heart land,
my mythical island.
It’s time to give up the dream because the dream is not real.

It’s a narrative cooked up in New York,
It’s a museum story,
it’s not based on contemporary reality or geography.
It cannot be found by any co-ordinates of latitude and longitude.

There is no civil wars, bloodshed and feuding,
No malaria, spiders, snakes and leach infested rainforest.
No it’s a legend.

Has it been years of wasted thoughts and energies?
PNG the fictional character in my own narrative.

Hilda Ogden’s kitchen wall.
Papered in tropical paradise paper.
Three plaster ducks
flying across the illusionary blue sky,
past a palm tree.

That simulacrum is as real and as close
as I’m ever going to get to Papua New Guinea.
I need to get a grip or I’ll become Walter Mitty.
stop messing about and face up to reality,
cold Northern European Reality.

I live on an island
in the North Sea
that has more cold days
than warm.
The only palm trees are in the Indian restaurant on Bradford Road.

PNG focused the statues, carvings, shield art, totem poles
Emotionally clean artefacts
Onto which my imaginary narrative is projected like a drive in movie.
Just like Dad – the blank canvas,
missing father onto which I could project my ideal Dad
or monster Dad
or Tyrant Dad.

He was real but his reality was a mystery to me.
he had his own set of artefacts, totemic objects and clan stories, just like PNG,
The pint of mild, the trombone, and the work overall with rouge on the sleeves.

PNG is a dead fantasy
Dad is a dead fantasy
I have an alliance to both,
Without getting too close to be hurt by either.

They are not here to contradict me,
to shout, to get offended, to humiliate, to berate, to be incomprehensible.
I can look at them both completely dispassionately as if they are nothing to do with me.

Let clouds drift through my mind.
And put things in perspective.
For now there is work to be done,
things to be filed away,
put in order,
books to close and put away.

Its time for critical thought. 

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