Poetry by Robert David Cohen: 2023

A war

Suddenly ambushed

By whatever the hell

Holds up the ceiling

And nails me to the floor

I am an inch tall

I weigh a ton

Red fluids slosh

That woman in the blue sweater?

She will blast off into space

At any moment

Spoons and lamps spinning after her

We are smithereens

We are rubble

The bowstring of the day is drawn

As far as it will go

Numbered days

Numbered skies

Numbered gardens

Patience of the roof

Generosity of the shining bridge

Still alive in 2023

A war

-- New York, December 20, 2023

Dream: these are the tools you'll need

Last night I dreamt my mother gave me a toolkit when I was still in her womb.
In the dream I am me as I am today and also me floating in amniotic fluid and cigarette smoke 78 years ago. One by one, Mom inserts little tools into her bellybutton.

"Here are the tools you'll need," she says, rubbing her round belly.

I hear her voice from inside and outside, then and now, echoing down the years and through my veins.

Place the clock carefully

Place the clock carefully
In the pasture
On the shady side

Plunge your hand in the sack
Take a handful of seeds
Warm from the field

Thank you flame hair 
For looking like lost Lucy

-- New York, February 14, 2016

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)