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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

Art's struggle to sing it all
through jazz warfare & tell
everything he knew in brass
speed rap stir crazy utopia
of muscle chops push it in your face
rough unrelenting grace

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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