Mary's Trees 2

Thirteen bottlebrushes

Righteous women

Broad and plentiful

In garments of feathers

Brown and green

Adorned with 

Deep bright red jewels

These wise women

Gather in a sacred circle

Sharing revered counsel

Mary's Trees 1

Fern green

With a coffee gold

And eucalypt silver

Dappled through 

Growing fertile and dank

From a burnt

Charcoal black stump

Spring # 6

spring is for weariness
for feeling frayed around the edges
for splitting my seams
and arching my back

moments

morning

clutching at my scarf
around my bare neck
I walked through the 
6 o clock softness

I could see the morning
sharpening around me

angles, acuity, awakening

afternoon

nature, thick and intricate
folds and unfolds around me
in a bower
I think about
this woman
how her rosy cheeks
lay me bare
my rib cage aches and
expands
with warm desire
and the trees on the terrace
seem to grip at my skin

evening

rain drips sporadically
thunderously loud
wrenching sleep from my fitful mind
and heavy body
promising a weary day tomorrow

I am tired
I creak and groan
I need something fresh
it is slow, subtle torture

Sea Monsters

There is a darkness to the ocean tonight
a heavy purple grey
as I walk along the shoreline
water swells around my ankles
and salt wind whips at my cheeks
with a fierce cold

I have come here tonight
in search of abandoned treasures

Above me soars a mighty albatross
a massive creature of the sea and sky
thundering through blue
and calling out in
shrill desire
when he stretches his wings
in a graceful trajectory
the span of his reach blocks the sun
and bathes me in shadow.

There is a darkness to the ocean tonight

Here, along this grey estuary is where grand things
Dilapidate and drift
Here is where we receive regal ruins
Of the fearsome sea

Something chthonic
has submerged
and sprawled upon the shore
dismantled itself
and scattered its organs upon the estuary

We clamber over his body
a heaving, hursuit mass
his face
shrouded in seaweed
like a veiled bride

An old king has come to this place to die
his weary majesty
lies at my feet, rotting.
I can smell it

winter # 10

Winter is for

Cold toes and soft sunlight

For sunflowers

And Dyson blues

Desire is a stray bird

Desire is a stray bird
with ragged plumage
proud
but dirty and desperate
desire is a winged scavenger

Winter # 9

Winter is for

For a man with armfuls of tattoos and a ginger beard

On a freo sidewalk

Talking about birds and fruits

And potential permanency

Winter is for familiar barristers in forest green

For sitting on Gemma’s front steps overlooking the jacaranda tree

With green tea in mugs blue eyes blue and sunflower yellow

Synaesthesia of the Sky

Every morning as I drive to work, the sky puts on a different show for me. Often I feel really compelled of a moment to record the words that present themselves to my brain. It is quite a persistent demand, and I know I cant rest until I articulate it. it is tricky when I am driving, but I grab anything I can find to write on. I have endless receipts, and scraps of paper that I had found, and scribbled on the back of, in glorious desperation to make some tangible vestige, of a 'buzzing mind drifting to peace' moment. Once I couldnt find any paper so I wrote a poem on my leg.

I think the sky puts on such a calm and quiet show, most people dont notice it. But how could it be quiet? How could such an audacious display be calm? Maybe it rages with delight, but we just cant hear it with our ears. Maybe we are using the wrong body part for the wrong function. I wish I could hear with my eyes.

I wonder about ... the sound of sights.

I heard something about synaesthesia. How famous composers who saw different chords as certain colours. One composer thought, when he was young, that they dimmed the lights in orchestra theatres so that the audience could see the colour show in front of their eyes more clearly when the music was playing. he didnt realise it was only him who could see it.

When I spend time in the south with my grandparents, I run along the river every night at 5 pm as the sun started to set. The Eaton River is one of my favourite places. It is a rich and golden wealth of so many positive and beautiful memories. but even without that, it is pure and base aesthetic pleasure. The whole riverside comes alive at 5 pm, and in a different way every evening. Each day there is a different kind of sunset, a different kind of sky laced with different kind of light, and different colours, shades, dimensions. I felt like one evening the trees had a whole new shape and dimension to them, because of the way the sun was flickering through the sporadic gaps of sky. bark-sky-bark-sky-river-sky-light-light-light. 

Another evening, a few years ago, I remember feeling, with the full force of my mind and body, that the riverside was on fire around me. there is a row of rich red trees with bleeding glistening sap, that have that burnt black bark, that blisters and crumbles, and the rich red flecks through the charcoal black. the sun had reached a certain point of its trajectory and it flickered through the trees so fast, like the turning of an old movie reel, and, for me, the riverside was in flames.

One evening, as I was running in one direction the sky was gold, yellow gold like straw. Liquid buttery gold. And it reflected onto the river so the river was golden too. And then I turned around to run in the other direction and the sky on this side was pink. What a show, I thought. It was like the sky had two different sunsets for just one riverside. It was so audacious. Maybe it was quietly raging with delight but I just couldn't hear it.

As the sunset dissipated, the sky turned grey blue. Darkness was creeping in around me, and there was that element... there was that purple, to the air around me, that was the gathering dark. Is darkness just the absence of light? how can it be when I can see a physical purple all around me? I can almost touch it.

Earlier that evening, the sky had been reflected so perfectly onto the river, and I could see clouds in the water. I almost couldnt tell the difference between water and sky. was the river in the sky or the sky in the river? was I just standing on my head? I couldnt figure it out. It was beautiful confusion that I felt in my whole body. It was like the elements were sharing with eachother, air and water. up and down. It was like it was all around me. and it was.

I wrote this based on conversations with my friends Gemma and Maevana

Project Number One!

Do A Poetry Reading!

Yesterday I went to The Moon where they hold the Perth Poetry Club each week. I have been receiving emails from these people for months and months, but was too daunted, or maybe too disorganised to get there. One time I was even in the city on a Saturday and brought some poems just in case I mustered up the courage to pop in, but instead I met a friend. Something about the spirit that I am in lately, where things just seem less daunting, where most change feels positive and encouraged and positive change is so much more accessible. My mind feels a lot clearer, and is seeking more clarity still. It is good.
So yesterday I just popped down there, it was held in the back room of the Moon, and there was such a motley crowd. It was strange, and it was sweet, and I really enjoyed that. For some reason I envisaged something youthful and pretentious. This suited me much better, and totally assuaged my nerves. As strange as some of the people were, this was about expression.
The first person to get up and speak was a very old, hunched woman in a red matching tracksuit. She spoke about coming home after a holiday. There was a very large man with long hair and a beard wearing a garish hawaiin shirt who's poems were replete with 'fucks', but still, quite intelligently expressed. There was a European woman who kept forgetting the words to her slam poem, an asian girl in a doctor who jumper who spoke effusively about Vincent Van Gough, a few sensible looking men in sensible pants and sensible shoes who got up and did slam poetry that I did not expect, or beautiful poetry that I did not expect. There was a short bald man with glasses who walked through the audience loudly proclaiming his rhythmic poem, I think that was my favourite moment. Or maybe it was the new guy who wrote a rhyming poem about a lonely man in outback australia who built a tin effegy of a woman and got spade, and tetnis from his rusted steel companion. The two special guests were an interesting dichotomy. An older woman who had an interesting selection of poems, all of different forms, and she would tell us before she read them, a lot of them I had never heard of before which inspired me to do some research about form. (Mark Treddenick had planted that seed a few months ago, about the importance of form in poetry). And the other guest was a man in a hat and sunglasses who's sonnets were called 'death and vaginas' - about creation and voids. He also did a lot of rhythmic poetry which was interesting. I decided at half time that I would get up and do one. Sophie had just gone to a sketching course, and Sarah said 'Its the day for doing new things'. I had brought my books along just in case, so I was prepared. I decided to read Alpheuis and Arethusa, one of my greek mythology series.
I was hardly nervous. It did not feel like such a big deal. Not in the sense that I was unaffected or indifferent. not at all, it just felt right. It felt good. It felt natural. I did not feel the need for any grand expression of nerves or delight or accomplishment or breaking down of fear barriers. Even though I felt all of those things somewhere inside my brain. I think what dominated my mental landscape at the time though, making all those other thoughts quietly diminish, was a calm sense that this was good and this was right. I felt calmly thrilled, calmly confident, calmly like I was born to do this, to get up and share stories that I had crafted with my words.

red nose

I have never seen something so sexy
as blood rushing to the surface of soft skin
as her cheeks flushed from walking
and her nose, red from the cold morning air

Projects (To Do Before I Leave Next Year)

1) Keep a project diary and record this list in an interesting way

2) Buy Gum Boots

3) Go for a walk every day for 2 weeks, once in the rain (find different ways to document the walk)

4) Have a dinner party

5) Make a cross stitch

6) Bake 6 different loaves of bread

7) Take a photo portrait of each member of my family

8) Be a vegan for 2 weeks

9) Have a craft club, even if it is only once

10) Write a sonnet

11) Have a tea party picnic

12) Listen my way through Oumie and Oupa's massive classical music record collection

13) Paint - something of my own and something imitating or replicating an artist I like

14) Record my favourite objects in an interesting way

15) Wake up earlier than usual every morning for two weeks and write

16) Get people to make me mix CDs

17) Go to Pemberton and write poems about trees

18) Do a Poetry reading

19) Learn a song on guitar or banjo and do an open mic

20) Do a dance course - african, tap or swing

21) Buy red lipstick and red nailpolish and wear it, out

22) Try as many different national foods as I can

23) Have 24 hours without screen technology

24) Play the minimalism game for one month

25) Do something amazing with a stranger

sunrise

and then, to my left
smoking, blistering peaches
smeared across the charcoal sky

Michael and me

they owned golden dogs
and they ate golden syrup
they had golden hearts
and golden hair

sunrise

Distracted strokes of soft pink

Like misplaced socks

Scattered across the sky 

autumn 9

autumn is for early morning walks
through air as crisp and sweet as an apple

for the smell of eucalyptus in the dark
(for stopping myself from licking at leaves)

autumn is for tripping over gumnuts as I run along the river
and soft, yellowing sappy leaves

for rich reds
and charcoal black
of burning, bleeding trees

I desire oceans

If I could drink my fill

I would drain the ocean dry

I would press my lips to the mouth of the river

And breathe in every corner of her body

I would suck the brine from each grotto

Run my finger through each racing rivulet

Cup my hands beneath the gutter

Until I gasp for breath

for in me is desire

as boundless as the sea

sunrise

I play Russian roulette with the sunrise
some days I get skies threaded with anticipation
some days I get stained sheets and staggered breaths
some days I get the moment
mind splitting
a spill of colour

change

well I learnt to live with longing
that stale ache of desire

I went to the sea
to the sea each morning
I dug my toes in the sand
threw my arms wide
and called for grace
to soften the bitterness that had hardened my heart

I asked for patience
for myself
for those I loved with such fierceness

I tried so hard
I walked such a long way
with such heaviness on my back

and I shouldered it all
because I would sooner
set myself on fire
than let anyone down

because I am so strong
and so selfless

I celebrated it
I took a deep breath
steadied my stride
and I asked for more

more love,
more sadness
more life

But I am so tired
and I dont want a heavy soul anymore

autumn 8

autumn is for patchwork calico skirts
for heavy bones and sonnets
for rusty red and mossy green wool
and for blistered banjo hands

autumn is for a hardened heart

Iris

The western wind’s iridescent wife

He blows through my many coloured glory

We mount the sky with rage and strife

Our liquid love: a messy trajectory

Passion resounds in our quivering bones

Volatile lovers, we bring the storm

We lie tangled upon horizon’s throne

Through maddening love’s chaos, beauty is born

Autumn 7

autumn
is strange
and quiet
autumn is for floral shirts
and for feeling like
a dirty bird

Autumn 6

autumn is for hats
and the clean smell of shampoo

for sitting by the window
with top knots and rosy cheeks
as the sun melts and the night gathers

Harpies

For my birds of a feather

And so we lived and loved

As brazen harpies

Mad on salt water

In a bed by the sea

We were blemished, blissful

And absurdly free

Rambling poetic nonsense

As the sun melted into the sky

We don’t need your fickle beauty

We weave seaweed through our hair

And paint our faces with mud

A gnashing of teeth

A rustle of feathers

We delight in discord

By the gathering gold of the day

We clamber over mangrove roots

Thick, tangled and bulbous

Collecting shells and urchins

Like seagulls we scavenge

For the curious and the beautiful

But when the night turns raven black

We dance

In a whirl of dervish glee

Bare breasted and full bellied

Making mockery of the usual

Oh my Aello, my raging storm

You quite intoxicate me

With your resplendence, strange

And your convulsions, most peculiar

I seek the satiation of your caprices

We are chimeral creatures of chaos

Fearsomely beautiful

Beloved of the velvet sea

Wild women

We are wild women

Hot blooded, winged and limber

We pound the damp soil with our fists like drums

And sing out our pleasures to the night

We delight

In the strange shapes we make with our bodies

Unclothing each other

And laughing, shrieking to the open sky

A heightening of desires most base

An unhindered pursuit

Of our wicked yearnings

Spread your feathered limbs

Distort your face

Tilt your head back

And howl

As the stars burn bearing rapturous witness

To our sacred ritual

Of amorous theft

There is dirt under our nails

And teeth marks on our skin

And we are breathless with life

Io

Part One

When I was a girl

With skin white as milk

I would walk through vast and palatial halls

My head bowed in silent reverence

Alone in Acropolis

When I was a young woman

I offered counsel to Queens

‘Io’, they called me

Humble and beloved

The Virgin Priestess

One day I saw a man

More powerful than any I’d ever laid eyes upon

He was whispered to be a great King of the sky

And the marble floor cracked beneath his feet where he walked

He had thick dark curls that hung loose around his shoulders

A tangled beard and wild looks

And eyes that burnt into me

Waking a storm in my heart

He came to me in my dreams

Visions of golden fields

Growing rampant and procreant

Of limbs and moans

And the wild, fierce eyes of Jupiter

Part Two

The day I lost my innocence

I was walking through the laced and golden fields of Lerna

And he appeared before me

Surging with desire

I thought to evade him

But his gaze made my limbs heavy

It surprised me how gentle his touch was

How quickly my body turned to butter beneath his mouth

And I forgot all reason for resistance

He stretched his arms wide

And summoned the clouds

Dark and pendulous

To cloak us from watching eyes

To hide our tryst from the world

From the crags of Mount Olympus

Hera, Queen of cunning

Sees the skies gather with thick grey matter above that golden meadow

Suspicion aroused

She descends her watch tower

Jupiter, clutching at me

In the height of his pleasure

Whispers furiously and casts me to the ground

‘mutatio bovum’

I fall to my hands and knees

The incantation still ringing in my ears

As a sharp pain splits my head

I arch my back

And I groan, deep and guttural from my throat

My breasts and belly convulse and sag

My fingers itch and I look down to see

My horror

Cloven hoofs upon the dusty ground

Hera chases the clouds

They scatter at her hand

The barley withers and blackens at her touch

Fruit smokes and falls from branches

A fatal ripening

Smearing the soil with flesh coloured pulp

‘What’s this?’

Her voice mordacious

But sweet as red wine

It cloys at my ears

And I feel dizzy from my transformation

‘what a beautiful bovine

A gift to be bestowed upon your faithful wife?

I have such a thirst for milk

Would you deny me, husband, what I desire?’

Part Three

When I was a beast

I walked the land without rest

One thousand eyes watch me

One thousand gadflies sting me

And all are sentry

With the patience of the ages

Jupiter for my womb

Hera for my life

Wandering drives me nearly to madness

But as I stagger through Bosporus

The earth shapes itself around me

To guide my passing

I come upon a man

Bound in invisible tethers to the side of Mount Caucasus

With an eagle feasting from his viscera

His face twisted in agony, he calls out to me

‘Mother of Dynasties

You shall come to rest in Egypt,

And there you will return to woman form

And the fruit of your womb

Will release my chains’

Part Four

I find myself in a land of new gods

And strangely shaped temples

And there my wanderings finally cease

As I fall beside the Nile

Horns and hoofs retreating

My woman form returns

The day I became a Mother

I lay mired on that riverbank

Mud swells around my hips

And streaks across my distended belly

Milk leaks from my heavy breasts

And courses down my brindled body

The Nile rages

And I cry out in agony

for the child charging from my womb

the fluid of my fertility runs thick and fast around me

and courses through the mud

Unto me a babe is born

Precious child mud, river and earth

I clutch at him with all my remaining strength

And he feverishly drinks my life’s milk

The tide rises

And the sun bakes the mud to our skin

I name him Epaphus

For my skin still trembles from the touch of his conception

Part Five

When I was an old woman

They named me Isis

Mother of Dynasties

Each day my son grows stronger

They say he will rule Egypt

A great horned King

And son of his sons

Will free those who are eternally bound

But I have withered

My womb still aches

My skin is stained

Daubed and couple coloured

I lose my words

And moan from my throat

My legs buckle beneath me

And my hands grip the earth

Sometimes in my dreams I walk those halls

I see the ground crack beneath Jupiter’s holy feet

I still see that golden field

Blistering and smoking

I feel the grain pressed hard against my skin

I smell those cloying fruits

And feel his touch curdle me like butter

But I am a wise and weary woman

The child I once was burns in the sky

Beside her first love and his wild, fierce eyes

And my great, great granddaughters

Will return to that city Argos

And will walk the fields of Lerna freely

Intimacy

Come to me
Bare necked
And blemished

Desire is
Ten pots of honey
And something warm between my legs

desire is red wine

I drink you like

Red wine

Thick, sweet

Open mouthed

Bare necked

And straight from the bottle

You make my cheeks warm

And my head spin

desire is pumpkin tendrils

It is an organic thing

Like damp soil

Like vegetable scraps upon a compost

A heady cloying warmth

I press my hands against it

And it molds around my fingers

It grows

Rich and

Earthy dark

Like chocolate, like mud

It ferments

And fantastic things happen

Like pumpkin tendrils

It is procreant

And fertile

Just add liquid

The sweet sap of our thighs

heaving sighs

And it grows

rampant and unruly

It is an organic thing.

It is a wild thing.

Gillian

a weaver of dark stories, of weathered tales
with red hair the colour of autumn leaves
and a heavily pronounced face
like its been drawn with a lead pencil
one of those thick 6B ones you smudge with the side of your hand
she has these big eyes
too soft a blue for such a heavy face
and such harrowed songs

desire is a city of stone

Will it ever grow stale before I do?

Before I wither and erode

My heart

Like charcoal simmering golden black

A dried up fat river,

Dank and mossy tangle of roots

My soul, grey

My body crinkling like leaves

Will this passion for you ever subside

Because right now

It feels like it will remain stoic

For one thousand years

A city of stone

Inside my body

Gemma's fear

Gemma panics

Because the summer is shrinking around her

The summer of gardening hands

The summer of salt stained skin

The summer of thieving mornings

So we sleep in the bush

And she rises with the dawn and the shrieking children

And runs along the highway

She asks everyone

On the first day of autumn

‘what will this season give you?’

She is searching for something

Beautiful to fill her

To give to the world as the world gives to her

But no one can answer

Satisfactorily

The seasons chase eachother around us

and we swell

sometimes i think my heart
was too crazy for you
too damn crazy for you
too damn crazy for you

figs

tonight I ate a fig
it was a deep purple colour
balancing between maroon and burgundy
and somewhere in there
a night sky velvet
streaked with green
the promise of ripening
flecked and freckled

split in half
an opening far too physical
skin tearing softly like a staggered moan
the inside
a soggy cluster of seeds
is a soft, fresh pink
with maybe a hint of something
warmer
something more sultry
a blushing, flushing red

Pemberton #4

Driving down that long and dusty road into town
we stopped at a lavender farm
and ate pancakes by the lake
beautiful women wearing hats
sitting next to a lemon orchard
heavy and sagging with
ripe butter yellow citrus
we wove deftly between trees
with laughter
three nimble lemon thieves

summer #5

summer is for
Gemma's gardening hands
dirt underneath her nails
'only the ocean can wash my hands clean now'
summer is for too many walnuts
and arms laden with sunflowers

some dreams 3

I dream warmly and richly

and wildly

sweet and thick and consuming

like honey

i dream and

it surrounds me

and i ache

and its beautiful

Pemberton Tales #3

we looked at one another
with excited understanding
and maybe a bit of relief
such a precious place
to share with such a new friend
what if she didnt get it?
what if it did not enchant her like it did us?
undress all her inhibitions
meet her like a familiar stranger
and kiss her hard on the mouth?
But it was written all over her face
of course it did,
this place enchants everyone

she exclaimed in delight
Gen's eyes met mine and we shared a smile.

Pemberton Tales #2

we traipsed through the bush
banjo in tow
to tie a drape of material
around the slender arm of a roadside tree
to herald her arrival

Pemberton Tales #1

we all piled out the car
tails wagging
in search of southern treasures
bundles of records,
dresses, fabric
sparkling china,
an array of colourful mugs, pots, cups
and a hat rack in pieces

we delight in scattered curious beauty

aches

Restless and reckless
I ache for the south
to write a book about trees
and wear gum boots all day
to cast away
what feels like a disease
fickle but pervasive

summer #4

summer is driving into the hills
a room, intricately chaotic intricately creative
for ginger chutney
a workshop full of guitars like cadavers
for arms covered in grey water, pulp, feathers and leaves
grey haired women in long blue dresses and bare feet
and hand picking blueberries

summer #3

summer is for
colourful beads around my mother's neck
a pile of records hand picked for me by my father
and the smell of basil
a delicious heave in the olfactory

tactile

'tactile'
you said
your face alight

'I love running my fingers through dust on surfaces
and polishing something to reveal the luster underneath'

I think about your fingertips

our cheeks were flushed from dancing,
our shirts clinging to our sweaty skin
my drumming music had long ago stopped

you pulled your singlet down your arm
I counted the freckles on your shoulder

a chair

(I set myself a fiction challenge to write about fears)

My bones creak under the weight of my abandoned dreams
I sit in a chair in my kitchen.
it stinks of leather and a heady fragrance of fear.
we are stoic companions
when I lower myself into its arms, it sighs and sags.
It was always meant to do this, to be this. It was created for this moment. To envelop my apathy. To cradle me into endless evenings and endless bottles of wine, endless operas, and the stale and bitter taste of loneliness that I impose on myself.
I fulfill the purpose of the chair.

But for me, it is a symbol of my withering purpose. Long ago turned to embers, to crumbling charcoal. Drained with the bottles of wine, scratched and jumpy like my records. Bitter and dormant like my dreams.

I cant even remember what frightened me so. What paralysed me. How it had such power over me.
how when they called to me softly and fervently in the night, I stayed there in that chair. I furrowed my brow, and tapped my pen and stayed there and dreamt of dreaming.

I created a house around me, bricks and mortar of limitations. I shut people out. People who should have inspired me, I shut out because they represented all I could not be. I even avoided anyone else because they represented the mediocrity I was so afraid of turning into. Now I long for the comfort of ignorant mediocrity. My mediocrity raves and rots inside of me. as I rave and rot in this life, in this chair.
I could not even find their perspective, that comfortable acceptance of a notion of average. I could not impose it on myself or build it within myself if I tried.
If my life depended on it.
And it does.

I became bitter. Secluded.

I used to drink in bars. A silent figure, both familiar and stray. I would catch the eye of someone nascent and dreamy and dark around the edges. I could see them take a deep, staggered breath with anticipation and a deep lust for what i know I exuded. Me with my artistic nonchalance. I would walk up to them and take them silently by the hand and we would leave. I could hear their hearts beating out their chest for the thrill. They were always happy to talk about themselves in cloying excess. Their boyfriends, their girlfriends, their fucking creative desires. I would sit silently, with watching eyes.  People lusted me, people wanted to love me and engage with me. They strangely sought my burdening passion, my desperate self imposed seclusion. We would search eachothers bodies with desperate hands. They would search me for whatever they were mislead to believe I had inherent in me, I would search them for what they saw in me. We would fuck silently, communicating solemnly with our eyes, our hands, our bodies. And then late into the night, even they slept fervently, I would sit furiously, brooding, sucking deep on a cigarette watching the rise and fall of their ribs.
Inside that chest was something alive. Something fresh and fierce.

And then even fucking became too much of a creative burden. I could no longer communicate even desperation to my lovers. Because I was not even sure if that was real anymore. I turned them away.

I laugh to myself. Bitterly. I empty the bottle of wine. It stains my lips, it stings my teeth. I turn over my record and I capitulate into my chair. 

14 wishes for 2014

1) be more specific
2) be more organised
3) decision time (make a genuine effort to get a job in law OR make the decision that it is not for me and choose something else)
4) projects
5) patience with myself
6) more time for music
7) eat more spicy food
8) spend more time learning french
9) change my perspective on romance
10) get another tattoo
11) think more about future goals and dreams
12) stop being intimidated. be more confident
13) get on top of my finances
14) be more honest and assertive

you asked me when

when is 'when'?
when will that be?
we can't surely say
but you'll know it
you'll know it is 'when'
when it is around you
when 'when' is around you,
you will know that
now is 'when'
that 'when' is now
and then
now
will seem so far ago