Pascin will see you now

i will see you again,

but not yet, my friend,

i whispered several years after 

we had met,

but now i was dead:

not he or she or they or all else who came to play,

(the many artists and hangers-on),

drinking and eating and loving till the earliest dawn.

they might say it was madness in my blood as i wrote,

but i calmly slit my wrists and hung by throat,

tossing a bloody testament on the nearby gallery wall,

before my solo show about Cecile and my personal downfall:

oh, yes, i knew triumph and despair,

dabbled in color! 

and whores with fine lines and wit

or maybe duller;

but if you slept, i was alert

at Montparnasse,

always the flirt,

never considered the serious painter

as i wanted to be known.

so i fade,

become fainter,

and wonder between bottles of red and white wines,

will i see you again, my friend?