hope i never fall again

Sitting here bored, stuck between the moments of the night is young and time to go to bed, I do the only ego-centric option available to me and look through my poems and blog. I've a thing about reading certain poems that take me back and remind me of a past moving further and further away, and of poems that I'm particularly proud of; Hope I Never Fall is a case in point.

It has remained unchanged since it was first written in 1992, and takes me back to strange and unwelcome memories of my teenage years. But that't not important. What is important is that through tired eyes i see a way to make changes that - where how and where I'm sitting right now - will be for the better.

I want to turn it around from a plaintive hope that all will be okay in the end, to an unspecified threat to an unknown 2nd person; everything had better bloody-well be alright, or you're going to get it...

I think i can do this by simply substituting I hope... with Hope..., and one possibly other minor change which hasn't been added here (substituting my with your or our in line 6)

Hope I Nevel 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.

(revisited)

I'll need time to let it sink in, time to get used to something so fixed and secure in my conciousness being subtly altered and/or desecrated.

In the meantime there's some important questions raised.

What happens to the original poem? Is it replaced or supplanted? Irrespective of less-than-negligable importance it holds in the hearts of the nations poets and historians, should history - even history as minor as this - ever be rewritten?

I've no idea...