Noah Cicero - Bipolar Cowboy

the chord structure of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”

covered by Amy Winehouse, I want to become that song, I learn

the song on guitar and strum it on my adobe porch thing,

trying to become non-human, sometimes I try to become

the taste of a Carl’s Jr. cheeseburger, I want to be

that delicious, that bad for you.

Sometimes I listen to Amitabha chants,

Navajo chants, even old

Kentucky Old Regular Baptists call out chants, I

want to be a pure feeling, that may lead to heaven,

but instead I am Noah Cicero, sometimes I scream, I

can’t be controlled, I can’t be tamed, because I

don’t know what to be—

When you see a pronghorn antelope from your car, high up

north in Nevada, by the Walker River Rez. I don’t know

what to be, the antelope, the person seeing the antelope, the grass

that the antelope is eating, the feeling the person gets from

seeing the antelope, the feeling the antelope has while

eating the grass, so I try to be all things, then I realize,

I’m just wind, swirling and swirling, and it is okay, and

it isn’t okay,

and all will work itself out, something is taking its course, but

it never works out, and all all all it comes, and the wind

shaking the leaves of the palm tree, the hum of bugs, and

me trying to find a job on Craigslist.

I sent her an email,

it said, “Call at 8pm, your time

today, and read these sentences

to me, don’t even wait for me to say

hello, just start reading—

Noah, you will never see me again.

Noah, you will never hold me again.

Noah, if we are in the same room, we cannot

kiss, we cannot touch, we cannot do

anything physical together, because

I have a new boyfriend.

At night or when I’m bored at work, I will

remember sitting with you

next to the Cuyahoga and Meguro River.

I will even remember the

river in Santa Fe that had no water.”

Then in a peaceful voice, say—

“Goodbye Noah.”

She never called that day. He received

an email four days later stating, “Noah,

get it together, it’s been a year. Watch

some Greta Gerwig movies, and get

over it.”

Sometimes I lie down

in the desert,

trying to become

as quiet as a cactus

sometimes I wish

I could become

a cactus

My favorite cactus is the

escobaria vivipara—

It is funny, it is shaped

like a beehive.

This planet has a lot of people

on it.

I’ve seen people in Ohio, Canada,

New York City, on the edge of the Grand Canyon,

down in Baja, in Japan and Cambodia, I saw them,

with their faces, hands, everyone

has a different face, everyone has a different

opinion on heaven, and their opinions and

their faces are vital to their identity, to their beauty,

to their song.

We all seem to have the same universal

urgencies.

Love, family, dealing with change,

missing people. Maybe we

are all one person named Randy.

And Randy is super bipolar, and

maybe even a cutter.

I am sorry—

to the girl in Poland,

to the girl in Seattle,

to the mail order bride from the Philippines.

And even to the stalker Romanian girl—

I cannot love you—

you seem really nice,

even a little funny.

But my heart, my brain,

even my penis still protests,

for another, still plays the old songs.

Maybe one day, when I’m

not paying attention, someone

will slip into my heart, just imagined

my heart in the desert, maybe Death Valley.

Where the dunes are, a rattlesnake comes upon

my heart, biting it and

pouring venom into it.

1.

In the Grand Canyon

employee dining room.

A 72-year-old Navajo woman

worked cleaning tables.

The government made her

go to Cleveland for school, so she

became friends with Noah from

the Cleveland area

who worked the register.

She was from Steamboat,

on the Navajo Rez.

She had her name

tattooed on her hand.

She said she did it

when she was 14

with a cactus needle,

the ultimate stick and poke.

Noah Cicero would talk to her

about Navajo/Hopi/Zuni religion.

The God of the Navajos is Changing Woman,

who made love to the sun,

that created the son who killed the monsters.

And Coyote runs around the western lands

doing tricks on humans to show them

that they are taking life too serious.

One day Noah mentioned Changing Woman,

and the old Navajo woman said,

“Don’t mention my religion, you don’t believe,”

in a forceful voice.

Noah felt really bad. Not only because

he hurt her feelings, but because

he knew he believed in nothing.

The funny thing was, he didn’t know

why he didn’t believe in anything.

2.

Noah Cicero’s friend Nicky

came to Las Vegas.

Grew up together in Ohio,

both exiled.

He to New Mexico,

Noah to Nevada.

To the desert.

They did the tourist things,

went to Valley of Fire

in the twilight.

They walked among the 3,000-year-old petroglyphs,

done by a people long dead. (No one has any

idea who drew them, Noah liked the idea of pictures

without ideas.)

Little drawings of animals and families.

Families that looked like aliens?

Kind of?

Nicky and Noah walked off the trail,

they sat on a red cliff,

talking about vision quests

and grad programs.

Nicky who doesn’t hike much,

wanted to hike around a certain red rock,

assuming it would return to the trail.

But they were lost, with the sun setting,

no water, no food, lost among giant red rocks,

basically Mars.

Nicky thought it was fun, but the sun was setting,

it was getting colder and colder.

Noah who had hiked 150 miles in the desert,

knew they would get sick without water,

get really cold, and there would be zero light

in a place called Valley of Fire.

Noah stopped Nicky.

“Nicky, if we get trapped out here,

no water, it is 58 degrees but in

four hours it will be 33. No light,

no food, our lives just got

very serious.”

Nicky’s facial expression changed.

He understood.

They kept walking, scrambling,

but ending up nowhere.

The sun setting darkness coming.

With Nicky ahead,

Noah Cicero put his hands together

and prayed. Not to anything specific,

just a good old-fashioned

“save our asses” prayer.

They walked and scrambled,

Noah kept looking for tracks

in the sand, but the footprints

would disappear when they hit

the red rocks. He found some

small paw prints

and followed them.

With barely any light left,

they found the road.

When they got back to the car,

a coyote walked out of the brush,

strolled past them, and went back

into the desert.

3.

At the Rhyolite ghost town,

deep in the Nevada desert,

60 miles north

of Las Vegas.

Nothing but Joshua trees and lizards.

Noah Cicero walks among the ruins.

A couple, man and woman, sit on a bench.

Noah says, “Hi, where are you from?”

They respond, “Vienna, Ohio.”