83 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
83 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
---
|
||
title: At The Quinte Hotel
|
||
tags:
|
||
- authorship/other
|
||
- exclude-from-word-count
|
||
- status/complete
|
||
- type/media/poetry
|
||
author: Al Purdy
|
||
collection: Poems for All the Annettes
|
||
type: poem
|
||
year: 1962
|
||
up: "[[poetry]]"
|
||
---
|
||
# 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 \
|