hope against hope

i've never been any good in keeping promises to myself. if there's a diet to be started (and many have passed and fallen on the way), then i'll make a grand gesture of commitment, tell anyone who's listening that this time i mean it, and promptly fall flat on my face. but that's okay, because there's always another broken promise just around the corner to occupy my mind. it's not the major things i'm referring to here (such as anything family-related), but promises i make to myself to change the course of my life for better (basically self-help) and give myself back the confidence that has slowly ebbed away over the years.

this blog is one thing that has been has been sustained over the course of 2007, and this pleases me greatly. i've managed to post something every week or so and at the very least i hope it brings comfort and nostalgia to me in the following years as pretty much the very first diary (in the loosest of senses) that i've ever kept.

the following poem is special to me for the simple fact that it's my favourite one. that may not show my later work in a favourable light (being 15 years old), but then just because Be Here Now was crap doesn't mean Definitely Maybe's impact is ever diminished.

it was the first time i tried something different in the structure of a poem. the first stanza is effectively only 4 lines long, with the last word in the line (e.g. undoing) rhyming with the first word of the next. It was also much looser than anything i'd written before, where the meaning was finally more important that how it sounded. it doesn't sound like much, but meant/means a lot to me.

as i've previously droned, moving to Sheffield was a real turning point in my life. i became a different (and better) person, more closely aligned to the kind of person i'd always wanted to be. however, easy as the transition appeared on the surface, the self-doubts and sanity-checks were still there; never to be given to much mind-time, but never to be forever ignored.

this poem is where i tell myself to believe in myself. it's not confident in tone because the confidence wasn't really there. more a gentle reminder...

Hope I Never Fall

I hope
I can cling to the fact
That all I have is real.
I feel
That to forget this
Would point to my undoing.
Pursuing
All my hopes and dreams
Gives me great comfort here,
And here
I can be wholly sure
Of all that gives me hope.

Thus,
Not in a critical way
Can I come to a conclusion.
From my mind meandering
I see through the illusion
Of the clouds that promise
To catch me
From my ill fated fall.

I hope I never give in to them.
I hope I never fall.


July 1992