WEBVTT

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And I don't know what I
want to close with now.

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Let me go back.

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I'm going to go back
to known territory now.

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[LAUGHTER]

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All right.

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So let's read a boyfriend poem.

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We'll read two more
from here, you know?

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Then I'm out!

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[LAUGHTER]

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So I'm born on
Valentine's Day, which

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makes for an interesting
holiday of terrible chocolates

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and stuff.

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But my boyfriend and
I live so far away

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that we don't always get
to properly celebrate,

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or at least what I would
call a proper celebration.

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78.

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OK.

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So two things about this poem.

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I reference Ted Kaczynski,
who's the Unabomber.

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He is not my boyfriend.

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So I just need to clarify that.

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[LAUGHTER]

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And then Valentine's Day.

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And I think that might be it.

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OK.

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"Manifesto."

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You can't eat your
cake and have it too,

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Says my boyfriend
and Ted Kaczynski,

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turning clichés into bombs.

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My boyfriend, who is
not the Unabomber,

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Loves me from 1,300 miles away.

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We dream over the phone,

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Count the days until
our next visit.

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At Whole Foods before
Valentine's Day

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I buy a red velvet
cake I'll eat alone.

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A man walks out with a
double dozen red roses

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wrapped in cellophane.

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I miss my boyfriend.

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Can I eat my cake
and have it, too?

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Transpose verbs are what
got Kaczynski caught--

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His use of language,
his arcane mind.

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But he wasn't wrong.

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What good is having a
cake if you can't eat it?

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That clumsy phrase comes
straight out of Middle English,

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Straight from my
Valentine's red mouth.

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He long-distance laughs
as I puzzle the meaning.

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But isn't that the point?

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Love is a kind of syntax,

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A soft rhyme,

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Prison time.

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I'm eating my cake
and having it, too.

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