La Café de Flore

  La Cafe de Flore

La Café de Flore

At 172 Boulevard Saint-Germain,

the corner that meet Rue Saint-Benoît,

stands the famous coffeehouse,

in Paris.

 

Seated outside the café,

From there I enjoy to watch

The people at play.

 

So many pass by.

Many who's faces belie

While being-for-themselves.

They dare not look directly

At us patrons of the Café de Flore,

They're eyes look straight ahead or on the floor.

 

And what's more,

This café is so very crowded

With the ghosts of Sartre and de Beauvoir and their conversational friends at one table.

Oh, and there is Camus, Picasso and Cioran.

I wonder what Pablo thinks of

The café's art deco?

 

So many more ghosts are here.

Still. There remains room enough

For the patrons with life.

Although they might not all exist.

Still they are alive; able to pick up a knife.

 

"Yes, I will have Smoked Salmon with toast. And ice cold coffee. Thank you".

 

[ laughs to myself] That waiter, so inauthentic!

He believes himself to be a waiter. Ha, ha, ha!

What you do is not who you are!

 

So close is the outdoor café

To the passing cars.

Every auto being-in-themselves,

As they whip around the corner.

 

There she stares

At me, I see!

Another patron

Female, sipping on French ale while 

Being-for-others.

She wants to engage me!

 

I am not a poet though I write poetry.

Neither am I a philosopher nor a painter.

I'm just a man.

Oh perhaps this is what she seeks?

Just a man.

With all these famous people here

Both dead and alive.

How might I survive

At La Café de Flore?

 

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