This poem comes out of my solipsism. Its true purpose is for me to imagine a world where only duplicates of me exist. O, how tremendous that would be!

I wish it were about love. But love is a filthy word. Saying it feels like scrubbing your toilet bowl with a toothbrush and then immediately brushing your teeth with it.  

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2.16.17

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What if every face you saw was mine?

and all the bodies in the world were

as pale and broken as my body is. But

inside all their chests would be hearts

that feel for you the way I feel for you.

 

Embrace this new vision of the universe.

Know that if you choose to accept it you’ll

have no choice but to be with me, and you

will know what it means to be loved and

to have every set of eyes in the entire world

see you as beautiful.

 

You will know love as

imprisonment and love as liberation and

love as inescapable.

 

You will recognize love as you recognize air.

You will need it to breathe, to live, to sustain

yourself, and you will hate having to breathe it

when it smells like sewage. But you will have to

breathe it even then.

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Written at 10:45 at night, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA, after eating Indian food nearly to the point of bursting.