Coyote Graveyard NoHo: Homeless Shelter Epic Poem Memoir
By Richard Del Connor, Buddha Zhen, Buddha Z
This is an epic poem. As soon as I find all the accumulated pages from many months of my one year stay at the North Hollywood Homeless Shelter I’ll do a word count. I need at least 10,000 words to call it, “an epic poem.”
NOTE: Just did a work count: It’s over 17,000 words which includes some descriptions and photograph captions. So it’s EPIC!
This poem represents my bewilderment of being trapped in the Coyote In A Graveyard rock opera I performed in 1984 and 1985 in Los Angeles night clubs. Inspired by a failed romance and the book One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, this 1984 rock opera became a hit show and was heralded by Stephen Spielberg and Michael J. Fox who performed onstage with us.
The original Coyote In A Graveyard rock opera story was written when I was homeless in 1984 on purpose. I was working at LAX as a Union Carpenter and saved my money to launch my independent record label that year in September 1984 with the vinyl album titled "Temptation" by Richard O'Connor & The Rich.
During those years from 1985 to 1987 I was a student in the UCLA film school and this rock opera became a screenplay for New World Pictures. In the screenplay they asked me to rewrite the ending from a tragedy into a happier ending in which the drugged up hospital patients escape.
Then in 2018 I was hospitalized in the Martin Luther King Hospital in Compton, California and after 5 months of recuperation there was transferred to the NoHo Homeless Shelter of this Epic Poem story.
I was supposed to only be in the shelter for "three weeks" and get my Section 8 housing subsidy but just like my 1984 rock opera it became apparent I was a captive because they were making a huge profit by keeping me there. So eventually, I decided to be homeless and escape this shelter.
During the year I lived in the NoHo Homeless Shelter I was performing in nightclubs as the "Kung Fu Cowboy" playing my rock 'n' roll flute style that sounds similar to Jethro Tull.
I was also performing libraries, book stores, coffee shops and theaters as "Richard Del Connor Philosopher Poet" in which I would perform a couple poems then conclude with a solo song on my flute. This book includes some of the other poems I wrote and performed in 2018 and 2019.
So this book Coyote in a Graveyard NoHo Skid Row -- A Rock Opera Epic Poem Memoir documents my homeless life in a homeless shelter and performing two or three days a week trying to become a POET STAR WHO PLAYS FLUTE.
Then in October 2019 I got a Section 8 apartment and the Covid-19 Pandemic Lockdown ended my performance career.
But now I've got a computer and here's my book.
I hope you enjoy this view of homeless life and are inspired or enlightened by my insights and poetic criticisms. I read at least 20 books per year and write a couple books each year... so now my goal is to publish these first 74 books I've written, then go back to performing as the Kung Fu Cowboy again. I've released a few songs under my artist name, "Kung Fu Cowboy." Check me out. Buy my books. Buy my albums. Cheer me on. My next goal is to live in a house that I own.