Refugees Of Bohemia

Painting The Magician By Rene Magritte

So here's another excerpt from my epic poem Café Apollinaire for your amusement :

REFUGEES OF BOHEMIA
by Gordon Coombes

dining alone on a cold supper
reading books like people
mistaking books for friends & lovers
finding passion in music
conjuring pictures & stories
a movie inside his head
watching movies for sustenance
food for thought
setting the table for an invisible guest
lighting candles
for a romantic evening
for a woman who never arrives
finally eating gruel & potato soup
night falls the walls close in
the blue round ashtray
holds the burning cigarette
upon the white oval table
propped on the red carpet
yellow light flows over it
into shadows beside the bed
against the browned smoke-stained walls
in the room of a surrealist poet
who heads for the door
to spend some time
at Café Apollinaire before it's too late-

At the end of the night
After leaving Café Apollinaire
poets & artists stroll arm in arm
along the shadowy streets of Paris
in the twinkling yellowish glow of gas-lights
inebriated by heady discussions
wine & absinthe
Fire-Dragons circle the moon
St.Denise wanders around
holding his severed head in his hands
the cynical Gargoyle Strygé
sticks out his tongue from atop Notré-Dame
returning to humble ram-shackled
cold dark garrets in the squalid slums of Bohemia
on dead end streets in rambling
make-shift cheap rat-infested
rent by the week hotels
a crazy maze new sections
added on willy-nilly
eating one meager meal a day
lighting candles stuffed in old wine bottles
dripping with hardened wax
struggling through another night
of a thousand hours
hearing a series of single gun shots
the sickening splashes of water
another poet or artist a genius
a third rater a poser
caught up in Romantic delusions
ends a life not worth living-

at the end of all our struggles
we shall be carried out
in a coffin by strangers
abandoned in a common grave
or in a grand funeral procession
a multitude of mourners
led by a New Orleans Jazz Band
through the Gate of St.Denis
to the Cemetery of the Innocents
buried left to ponder eternity-