28.2.10

Found Poem #1—Robert Pattinson



Robert Pattinson On Life Beyond Twilight


Text taken from this article, with a few embellishments


Rob and I discover we share a mutual fascination

with afflictions that maim and disfigure and disgust:


He brings up cancrum oris, in which bacteria gnaws at the side

of your face until you get kind of a window in your head


and the entire world sees your teeth, shining white like a row

of piano keys. I mention cyclic vomiting syndrome,


a condition in which you puke all the goddamn time, and he

delights in lymphatic filariasis, where parasitic worms


burrow into your lymph nodes and can make balls swell

to the size of watermelons, forcing you to tote them around


in a large wheelbarrow. All this could make one hell

of a blockbuster hit movie, we agree, with a load of extras


and a few elephants, elephant actors like him. He wonders

if on some cosmic level, he might be a bit like elephants.


Do you know how they die? He asks me, as he sips his beer.

The elephant trainer told me their molars get ground down


from eating all that wood but regenerate like six times.

And after that they slowly starve to death.


Which is poignant and also must be what gives them time

to wander empty-stomached to the elephant graveyard.


They're incredibly designed creatures, he says.

I mean, people hang on way too fucking long.

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