The Potatoe Valentine & Other Love Poems

By Richard Del Connor, Buddha Zhen, Buddha Z

The end of a family. The end of a marriage. The end of love?

In 2011 Richard Del Connor was searching for answers. Searching for blame. Searching for hope. So he remembered what love was.

Bouncing between what he’d had, what was, what is and what could be... these are the romantic thoughts of a man who had given up his Hollywood career to raise his children as a Mr. Mom. He’d given up his music performance career. He’d given up his photography career. Now he was 57 years old and he was stranded far from his dreams.

So our romantic pup looked within for answers and wisdom to learn from his twenty years of raising his kids and trying to hold his family together.
What did he learn?

In the absence of a lover or love affair, Richard's creativity and romantic nature explored their farthest limits of imagination and remembrance.

After purging himself in his Rainbow In The Shade poetry book, Richard discovered some romantic memories hidden for decades. These unanswerable questions drove our heart broken Zen Pup into a poetic odyssey of self-discovery. These poems are the intellectual and spiritual journey of Coyote's submission to his memories. Follow his poetic soul's quest for love with willingness to take the blame for his lost love relationships. Searching for answers from his past to unlock the success of his future, Coyote dug out his memories of past lovers and the women he'd lived with in the 1970s.  Wanting to improve his possibilities and avoid repeating any past mistakes, he uncovered a wealth of romantic feelings.  Unable to discover any guilt or blame he may have earned, Coyote emerged in a newborn passion for life, and a confidence in his abilities and compassion.  

Mormons, Christians, menage-a-trois, and harbored runaways fill the pages of this romantic journal of love by the happy hippie, The Hippy Coyote of American Zen. In 2010 Richard wrote most of the Human Values for Success in Family and Business. He was proud to announce it's completion on his birthday of 2011.      Then he wrote the following:      
Poetry Books of 2011:          
BOOK 1: Rainbow In The Shade          
BOOK 2: The Potatoe Valentine & Other Love Poems          
BOOK 3: The AntiChrist          
BOOK 4: The Holocaust of Man      
Novels of 2011:          
BOOK 5: Masonic Kung Fu Book 1          
BOOK 6: History of Zen from A to Z      
Science Book of 2011:          
BOOK 7: Connor Black Hole Bubble Theory                                    

By viewing the above list of Coyote's writings in 2011, you can see how this book, The Potatoe Valentine summed up his personal quest for guilt, but opened the door to many other aspects and events of his life.  These forgotten romantic events, and family secrets were explored in his controversial subsequent book, The AntiChrist.  This is the book that bridged the gap between Coyote's romantic memories and the unknown possibilities due to the secrets and deceptions he was a victim of.

Sadly, I became homeless, Christmas 2011.  So my creative productivity was hampered by living in my car until 2019.  Today, in 2023, I have published 22 books in 2022 that I wrote this past decade but could not complete because of my homelessness.  I'm anxious to clean up my past so I can move into my future.  I just purchased my first digital camera yesterday.  Because of 35mm film ending in 1999, and my poverty, I have not been a photographer for 22 years.  My life is just beginning again after a year of cancer chemotherapy and radiation in 2021.