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