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Now for Instance the Idiot

David Meltzer

1937 –

2016

Now for instance the idiot
who watches through the slit eye
and tilted head

a mouth that smiles without a sense of humor
watch him watching you
and know that he sees you

without smiling

“Now for Instance the Idiot” from DAVID'S COPY: THE SELECTED POEMS OF DAVID MELTZER by David Meltzer, Introduction by Jerome Rothenberg, Edited with a Foreword by Michael Rothenberg, copyright © 2005 by David Meltzer. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

More by this poet

A Poem for My Wife

I’m in my room writing
speaking in myself
& I hear you
move down the hallway
to water your plants

I write truth on the page
I strike the word over & over
yet I worry you’ll pour too much water on the plants
& the water will overflow onto the books
ruining them

If I can’t speak out of myself
how can I tell you I don’t care about the plants?
how can I tell you I don’t care if the books get wet?

David Meltzer

2005

Untitled

Art's desire to get it all said
to all who thought him dead
in the joint & beside the point

David Meltzer

2011

Poems

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Now for Instance the Idiot

More by this poet

A Poem for My Wife

Untitled

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