Lunch With Lutetian Cannibirds
(inspired by my walks through the Luxembourg Gardens.)

"Oui, oui." The polite peck on the beak, as the Lutetian cannibirds perform the two kiss etiquette. They genuinely await a table, but blink with mild enthrallment of yet another mundane fine dining cliche. Gaulloises's lit in unison, they begin to float with smoke, flying inward to enter the clouds. They're aware of the beware-of-ozone-idealogy beneath the "french are made of birds" smoking-only sign that decorates the terminal embarkment walls of the wind.

The midday ambiance is Cafe Poète, enshrining the new petrel poses and other rogue fashions now acceptable among Parisian birds. Who knew lunch on top of dead poets could be such an avant-garde rendezvous, as they approach the perch of their choice: any of the stone heads surrounding the poet sculpture necropolis also known as the Luxembourg Garden. The options include: Baudilaire, Rimbaud, Dante, Wilde, Miller, Poe, Paz and Pound rock cadavers disguised as tables for resurrecting the independence fire. Like the French perched around them, the poets too seem to enjoy the rumored pretense of a scattered individuality, or the "lumiere" of a light brunch at least.

Now enthroned just above the left eyebrow of Spanish peace (Paz), they hunch into their standing seats with webbed feet and glance through the menu. Barbarie, becasse, blanc de volaille, bouribut....the sauces begin with B(ird). "What will it 'be'", they wonder, amid conversation lift and free samples of solar libations (sunlight) which they absorb with chintzy smiles. Aside from an occasional glance at the sun, they enjoy observing the extravagant doublet of peacocks, while stilts, shanks, herons, ruffs and other tourists sacredly huddled in the distance.

Suddenly, a cabaret leg mounts the shoulder of Octavio Paz and the waitress undresses an erudite notepad from under her girdle. After the cannibirds order "Cream of Egypt", she places the pad under her lace and tiptoes back to Sorbonne University's Philosophy department across the lawn. Nearby, Italian rats scurry about, directing their frisson towards incest and sycophants.

Near the Italians, in the weeds of flamboyant tulips and broken wings, a large family of blue beak paupers snatch pigeon crumbs dropped from the baguettes of passersby. While they would prefer a poached egg, the wheat does fill them up temporarily. Above them, the cannibirds now feeling sorrow for the poor, dream of utopias where their own decadence dies with them. Determined to implement their grandiloquent ideas, they write manifestos which are gratefully read by the lower-class birds. But as history shows, words, cannibirds and deeds like liberté, egalité and fraternité, don't mix well in a posh cocktail.

While scavenging the slimy but delicate mis-proportions, the Italians and other proletariats continue to bump feathers and whiskers. This radical idea of a bohemian-bourgeois manois-je-tois with freedom certainly appeals to their Renaissance ethics. The irony in the paradox doesn't bother the bees now feasting on powdered spittle from the Fleur-De-Lys nearby. After all, they've already secured an adornment on the breast plates, crests and currency surrounding the Latin Quarter.

After their entrée in Ancient Egyptian gnosis, the cannibirds filled with intellectual stimulation, order an absent-minded absinthe aperitif to deflate their enlightenment. They take this time to flap with complacency of things ungained but never lost. This Lutetian lunch certainly served their luxurious appetite for art nouveau. Indeed, next week they'll dine a bit further from the ground - on top of the adjacent obelisk "imported" from Alexandria - and without a doubt, will h-owl of a need for more privacy.