Whom then to love? Whom to have faith in?
Who can there be who won't betray?
Who'll judge a deal or dipustation
Obligingly by what we say?
Who'll not bestrew our path with slander?
Who'll cosset us with care and candour?
Who'll look benignly on our vice?
Who'll never bore us with his sighs?
Oh, ineffectual phantom seeker,
You waste your energy in vain:
Love your own self, be your own man,
My worthy, vulnerable reader!
A worthwhile object: surely who
Could be more loveable than you?

Don't let him manipulate you.
He's influencing you too much.
He's using you.

Remember those?
Were they really true?
What have you done to us?

All good words and pretty poems will fade eventually.
Like a mountain laughing at the river below.
Like a beautiful face you see for a second on the sidewalk.
Like a blue star glimmering in the sky, that's probably already gone.
All good words and pretty poems will fade eventually.
Like true love.
Like a good song to keep us going through the day.
Like our personal heroes to make us feel like were perfectly fine.
Like a letter in a drawer you were to bring to a secret naked lover.
All goods and words and pretty poems will fade eventually.
Like a great big whale dancing across the sea.
Like an endless forest full of life and chaos.
Like an aspiring poet writing this poem.
All good words and pretty poems will fade eventually.

Write as if you've never written before.
Write as if you'll never write again.
Write as if the person you love most in life ends up as the person you hate most at the wake of death.
Write as if nobody will ever see your work.
Write as if you've died more times in your own life than you've lived.
Write as if the music is still there.
Write as if you've suffered through your years.
Write as if you have the worst dayjob on earth.
Write as if it reads the reader. Rather than the reader reading your work.