Oh, for the love of…
just stop.
Stop it
with your alleged kindness
and your tragic attempts to make me feel good.
They feel bad.
Your compliments are painful to hear
and do nothing but hurt me.
Let it be.
Leave me by.
Go bye bye.
Begone!

Every time you compliment me
whether it be superficial
like how I look today
or what I may weigh
or the choice of words that I say
they all put me
into an inadvertent contest
with myself.
If I look better than yesterday
what was wrong with me then?
How fat must I have seemed
if you can so easily spot the difference?
And what illiterate utterings
did you suffer through
to get to today’s surprising use of "wherefore"?

And the deeper
more sincere the compliment
the greater the blow you strike
at what I once was.
If you say I am writing better now
then what was so pisspoor
about my previous compositions?
Really
how DARE you, sir!

I do not like to think
that I have ever been anything
less than perfect
so if you see in me any improvement
anything at all
it shows how wrong I was
to be formerly impressed by myself.
What makes you the jury
of my existence?
Who are you to sit in judgement?

I defy your compliments
and am deaf to your further words.
I wish to hear no more of them
or of you
or of praise of any sort.
You would do well to listen
and before you do
perhaps give the address
of your barber.