NEO Poet Field Guide

Full name: Milenko (Miles) Budimir
Age: A spry 37
Habitat: the suburban stillness of Parma
Range: The Lit Café (in lovely Tremont), deep Cleveland Poetry Hour (Borders, Strongsville), Insights Coffeehouse (Brunswick), Mac’s Backs, Brandt Gallery w/ Russ Vidrick, and any place that will have me
Diet: Poets: David Lehman (deal with it, Claire!), Charles Simic, John Brehm, Nin Andrews, Philip Levine, Bruce Weigl, Dane Zajc, Frank O’Hara, Basho, among many others; Others: Emil Cioran, F. Dostoevsky, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bill Bryson, Pico Iyer, Anne Fadiman, Noam Chomsky, Hunter Thompson, Alain de Botton, Barbara Holland, etc…
Distinguishing Markings: Rustbelt Romance (2006, deep Cleveland Press), Missing Albertly (2008, Green Panda Press), and scattered poems here and there…
Predators: Fear, provincialism, credit card debt
Prey: The vast variety of alcoholic beverages, the ever-elusive enlightenment, life
Call:

“Dog Days”

City,
you are strange this day,
this night,
this long, dark night
of your insomniac soul,

heat lightning and
firework bursts
across your roiling skies

your boiling river,
spicy as jambalaya,
sweaty as a cayenne pepper punch,

and you, City, in one of your moods,
creeping sluggishness of jobless morning
descending on verdant veranda walkabouts,

murder in your streets,
on your sidewalks,
behind factoried ruins and in the weeds,

you, City, groaning, on your haunches,
like an ol’ junkyard dog,
guarding our burning hearts.


or “Weeds”
They always appear
where it seems impossible
they should ever grow,
let alone survive

between cracks
of unyielding concrete;

but nothing is so hard
that time and a little effort
can’t break down
into smaller pieces

of a dream,

where even in the
thick heat of summer,
a hopeful weed goes
right on living,

oblivious to
the odds
stacked against it.



Contact: budimir@hotmail.com (or www.mileswriter.com)