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+---
+id:
+aliases: []
+title: At The Quinte Hotel
+tags:
+  - authorship/other
+  - destiny/permanent
+  - exclude-from-word-count
+  - status/complete
+  - type/media/poetry
+authors:
+  - Al Purdy
+collection: Poems for All the Annettes
+type: poem
+year: 1962
+---
+# At The Quinte Hotel
+
+I am drinking \
+I am drinking yellow flowers \
+in underground sunlight \
+and you can see that I am a sensitive man \
+and I notice that the bartender is a sensitive man \
+so I tell him the beer he draws \
+is half fart and half horse piss \
+and all wonderful yellow flowers \
+But the bartender is not quite \
+so sensitive as I supposed he was \
+the way he looks at me now \
+and does not appreciate my exquisite analogy \
+Over in one corner two guys \
+are quietly making love \
+in the brief prelude to infinity \
+Opposite them a peculiar fight \
+enables the drinkers to lay aside \
+their comic books and watch with interest \
+while I watch with interest \
+a wiry little man slugs another guy \
+then tracks him bleeding into the toliet \
+and slugs him to the floor again \
+with ugly red flowers on the tile \
+three minutes later he roosters over \
+to the table where his drunk friend sits \
+with another friend and slugs both \
+of em ass-over-electric-kettle \
+so I have to walk around \
+on my way for a piss \
+Now I am a sensitive man \
+so I say to him mildly as hell \
+"You shouldn'ta knocked over that good beer \
+with them beautiful flowers in it" \
+So he says "Come on" \
+So I Come On \
+like a rabbit with weak kidneys I guess \
+like a yellow streak charging \
+on flower power I suppose \
+& knock the shit outa him & sit on him \
+(he is just a little guy) \
+and say reprovingly \
+"Violence will get you nowhere this time chum \
+Now you take me \
+I am a sensitive man \
+and would you believe I write poems?" \
+But I could see the doubt in his upside down face \
+in fact in all the faces \
+"What kind of poems?" \
+"Flower poems" \
+"So tell us a poem" \
+I got off the little guy but reluctantly \
+for he was comfortable \
+and told them this poem \
+They crowded around me with tears \
+in their eyes and wrung my hands feelingly \
+for my pockets for \
+it was a heart-warming moment for literature \
+and moved by the demonstrable effect \
+of great Art and the brotherhood of people I remarked \
+"-the poem oughta be worth some beer" \
+It was a mistake in terminology \
+for silence came \
+and it was brought home to me in the tavern \
+that poems will not really buy beer or flowers \
+or a goddam thing \
+and I was sad \
+for I am a sensitive man \