Tag: Sidney Nolan

Outliers

Can I write my life

as a poem

Quick short flashes of insight

of LSD, aka acid, colours

Bright edgy

Stare and dive into them

Driving by Aussie icons daily

Giant flagpole above the Parliament House

Flag flapping in the wind

A flag subservient to the British monarchy

Looking on but feeling no connection

Compare the figures

in painter Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series

Aussie landscape backgrounded

Stretching, shapely, tonal, subtle, expansive land

Figures of Ned Kelly and British police

Flat, harsh, superimposed

Not belonging in the Aussie landscape

Outliers

When and where do I belong

There is a place

A shared space for me

and extremely endangered gum trees

Callum Brae Nature Reserve

Here I belong

Talking to the trees

I reassure them

I will take a stand to protect

Our shared space

Escape

Outside Canberra Museum and Gallery

Let me sit

for awhile

and see if I feel better

Alienated by anti-poetic words

Symposium presentations

deadening of affect

My mind engorged by a headache

My limbs growing numb

I hurry out of the room

Sidney Nolan Ned Kelly series

grab a sugary treat

to sit outside

in the sun

Building walls covered by harsh

techno renderings

of the beauty

of Sidney Nolan paintings

Walls coloured

a blue not of the sky

a blue with more green

than the piercing sky blue above

The walls asymmetric pattern

Yellow tiles in a ragged diagonal

small black square tiles

Children’s Art inspired by Sidney Nolan’s paintings

interspersed randomly

with colourized tiles

The sun on my back

Renewing

I cannot return

to the symposium

Dead words

causing bodily pain

Back inside the gallery

to briefly re-absorb

Sidney Nolan’s paintings

Then  going out to catch

the Rapid 6 bus

taking me home