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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 \