Noah Cicero: Bipolar Cowboy

After a two hour subway ride,

I started screaming,

“Where is S”

“Where is S”

“Where is S”

I took your shoes,

and put them nicely by the door.

Put your clothes on hangers.

And just stared

at them

and cried.

17.

When you dropped

me off at the Akron Airport

two months later,

to work at the Grand Canyon

I saw you crying.

18.

When I came back

from the Grand Canyon

for two weeks,

I spent the night at your apartment,

but I could tell

you had already moved on.

The last time I saw you.

You dropped me off

at my parents.

We had spaghetti dinner,

and my dad made me wash your car.

(At this moment go on YouTube and put on Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love.” Noah Cicero prefers the live version he did on a British TV show. Play it over and over again.)

We hugged.

And you drove away.

Every muscle hurts in my body,

thinking about that moment.

19.

It gets harder and harder

to write these lines.

The inspiration is being blown out.

Busy with life again, new jobs, new goals,

even new friends.

Not one ember left,

just charred wood.

Now we may forget each other.

(Noah Cicero has been staring blankly listening to “Skinny Love” for twenty minutes in the Mojave Desert in the patio area of a Starbucks with his arms folded, trying not to cry. He types one last line. Then listens to “Skinny Love” for another twenty minutes before going home.)

You are still the prettiest girl in the world.

my ex has turned into Scanner Darkly

the only thing I have to do is stay alive till I’m dead

i just told someone there is a Walgreens next to a Jack in the Box

i invented something called ‘tanning meditation’

started to believe that working retail might be poverty heaven

i stopped justifying

nothing is happening I like it

there is nothing to fear but the mental state of frustration and anger

i keep telling my own thoughts to “shut the fuck up”

this is my face

i have an idea of myself now if i speak to you a dead version idea of myself appears to kill the new version idea of myself can’t let that happen lo siento lol

you are really bad for yourself

i wanted to watch a movie but forgot how

standing next to plant, oh wow i’m a person

because of you, i brush my teeth every night

i don’t believe you

i don’t think about those things

you aren’t even that person anymore

I am really pretty and intelligent, why are people torturing me

if you eat Indian buffet and hike with me, i’ll love you forever

wish people worried about their sense of humors as much as their bodies

i brush my teeth every night

people are programmed to be in love

the day you realize all your exes are pretty great and it is you that sucks

a form of zen castration

all the sentient douche bags

I am done being myself

I would like a retraction on myself

I have internalized that everything is horrible, but I won’t resist it, trying to resist is where the pain comes from

the saddest thing is that I don’t think you have ever done anything ‘embarrassing’

Now when i think about you, it is different, i don’t feel bad emotions, i imagine seeing you again in some weird place, my face hardened a little by the desert sun, and you’re like i don’t know

everyone is really creepy, so fucking creepy

what if enlightenment is internalizing how lame everyone/everything is

everyone is inside everything, but everything is not everyone

lol

I have started wearing deodorant, it doesn’t contain aluminum

people are outnumbered by things that are not people

I didn’t write this to make you feel guilty or embarrass you

the only weapon i have is silence

i don’t hate you

the longer we’re apart, the more we change into different people

the Seoul subway map

I’ll meet you in 문산

I’ll meet you at the water tower

Looking back on it, you did try to become friends and say you were sorry. Shit

I don’t smoke and have psoriasis anymore and I stand straight up.

You followed me on Twitter, took a pic of it on my iPhone, i have evidence. you unfollowed me 16 hours later

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes I play “Band of Gold” by Freda Payne and wait for knocks at the door (I imagine you buying plane tickets alone in your bed in Cleveland, having our mutual friend drive you to the airport, our mutual friend saying in her grand style, “gotta do what you gotta do.” You sitting in a plane seat biting your nails, popping Xanax. Spending your last dollars to rent a car)

My funnest days are behind me, but my most glorious days are ahead.

To those who saved me: I will show up at your calling hours unannounced and give a testimony on how you once saved a man.

Oma Bernice Mullins, Wanda Mullins, John Talkington, Sara Childers, Hayley Anderson, Samantha Ditomaso, Cameron Pierce, Sam Pink, Lily Hoang, Jordan Castro, Rachel and Rebeccah Hershkovits, Dana Killmeyer, Nicholas Chiarella, James Chapman, ZK Lowenfels, Madison Langston, Jake Levine and Fin Dog.