Poetry by Robert David Cohen: I am Charlie Hebdo

I'm in bed

Thinking of waking

When the day breaks in

Wearing a balaclava

Carrying a Kalashnikov

Shouting my name

Charlie Hebdo

Now that I count my years

On a hand

I say to myself

I can banish fear

Now that my bed launches me

Into orbits of delight

And peals of laughter

Charlie Hebdo

I know now there’s beauty enough

In the world

To fashion ten billion eyes

Strength enough to wield ten billion pens

I refuse to surrender

I will be the mocking storm

As they place stones on me like a tomb

I will take my little life to the world

-- New York, January 8, 2015

ABOUT ME

Poetry was a huge part of my life in the 60s. I wrote like a madman, published a bit, gave readings and was generally active in the New York poetry scene. Then I moved to Mexico -- where I co-edited El Corno Emplumado/The Plumed Horn with Margaret Randall in 1968-69 -- and then to Cuba (1969-76), a period in which journalism and politics took center stage.

I returned to the US in 1976 and worked as a journalist at the UN and in Washington until 1990, when I joined UNICEF as speech writer (NY) and then communication officer (Mexico DF, Geneva and Panama City). Retired from UNICEF in 2008 and set up a New York and Pretoria-based communication consulting company with another former UN information officer, Paul Hoeffel.

I continued writing poetry over the years, published a chapbook but not much else. This blog gathers some of the poems written across the decades. I've indicated where some of them were published; most are seeing the light of day only here. I'll be adding poems -- old and new -- little by little.

Given how easy it is to edit texts on a blog, I probably won't be able to resist the impulse to tweak, so some of the poems just might continue to evolve before your very eyes.

Enjoy, comment, criticize!

PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS

· Rebelion en Estados Unidos, Antologia Documental (Siglo XXI Editores, Mexico DF 1969)

· The New Yorker Book of Poems (Morrow Paperback Editions, New York, 1974)

· There is a Country, Poems 1969-1977 (West End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1979)

Poems published in The New Yorker, Poetry magazine, Paris Review, Promethean, Angel Hair, Casa de las Americas, El Corno Emplumado, etc.

Awards: Discovery 65 (The Poetry Center); Book of the Month Club Young Writers' Fellowship (1967)

I am Charlie Hebdo

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