Noah Cicero: Bipolar Cowboy

Noah’s hometown.

There are over 30,000 towns

in the United States. And they

were the only other American tourists there.

Noah walked away laughing,

“Coyote and his tricks.”

And he meant it.

I went to the library on West Charleston,

by the community college.

I looked at the community college, and

considered taking a class on Excel

and Quickbooks.

Went into the library and returned

Pearl Jam’s greatest hits. I’m

on mood stabilizers, and I just took

an anti-anxiety pill. Recently,

I’ve been crying, having panic attacks.

I am high in the West Charleston Library.

Nobody in the library knows how lonely

I am. I thank them for that.

Go over to the CDs, stand in

front of the country CDs, I can

barely move, time doesn’t exist

on these pills. I see George Jones,

he is like my brother. I hold the

George Jones CD, he has a buzzcut,

the songs are from his early career.

I say, “George Jones,

you are my brother. My real brother

is a douchebag who won’t talk to me,

but George Jones you have

never rejected me. You are like

my Jesus, I knock and you let me in.”

I walk over to the religion section, and

find a book on Taoism that I never heard of. I am

holding Yuan Dao: Tracing Dao to

Its Source . I am going to listen to George Jones

and then trace the Dao, I have—

become a real freak.

Could I get any weirder? God?

Did you know that George Jones

has a cover of “I’ll Fly Away” and

it ain’t that bad.

There is a Douglas fir, on an

old logging road in Scotts Mills, Oregon.

It is three-pronged—

when it was little, it was struck by lightning, in

a horrible moment of agony. The tree

became three-pronged. It became

a deformed version of its species.

Years later lumberjacks came to

cut the forest down, they looked

at the deformed tree, and were

amazed.

I like to imagine the lumberjacks

standing looking at the

three-pronged tree, big guys

with strong muscles and slightly

flabby bellies, sweaty, wearing baseball caps.

Men nothing like me, but in a way,

exactly like me.

The boss stares at it and says,

“I like it, a three-pronged Douglas fir, you

don’t see that every day. I think we

should leave it.”

The lumberjacks let it remain.

It remains there, surrounded by new growth, and

people still walk by and stop to look at

the deformed plant. In America we

don’t have shrines of monks or saints or

magic rivers to gather by and swim in, in America

we leave three-pronged Douglas firs to

worship at and give praise. We take

a picture with our iPhone, send it to our friends,

and call it love.

Standing on Foster Road in Southeast Portland,

drizzle drizzle drizzle

the sky, the earth a big shadow.

Noah stood on the street,

looked around and thought

“This looks like fucking Ohio.”

He began crying, hyperventilating.

He just wanted it to be over.

He moved into a small room,

in some weird guy’s apartment. The weird guy said

he loved art. He used the word

‘bohemian.’

The man had two cats, they didn’t

seem evil when Noah first met them.

In the middle of the night, the cats

scratched on the door. Noah heard

the scratching, quick memory burst—

not good, of 2011. When he first met her.

Sleeping in her room in Oberlin, Ohio.

Her roommate’s cat, Tuna, would always

scratch on her door at night. Tuna would

stick his little paw under the door.

Noah liked looking down at the cat paw.

But now,

the cat scratching the door, there was a

horrible, tumultuous noise inside his head.

He woke up the next morning in hell, a violent hell

that involved Noah Cicero killing himself

on repeat.

Noah Cicero stood on Foster Road

in Southeast Portland.

Isn’t Portland supposed to be heaven?

Where did these evil cats come from?

Noah packed up his clothes

and Buddhist beads, got into

a car and started driving back to Las Vegas.

He drove through the Cascades,

through the cold desert. He had only one CD.

It was a mix CD his friend made.

The only good song on it was

that Mazzy Star song

“Fade Into You.”

Noah listened to that song on repeat.

He remembered his brother Michael,

long dead of a gunshot to the head,

in Kentucky.

His brother liked that Mazzy Star song.

Noah remembered that Michael

ordered 16 CDs from BMG for one penny.

Noah could see

some of the CDs in his mind,

floating around—

Elton John’s Greatest Hits , 4 Non Blondes,

Rod Stewart, Eddie Money, Violent Femmes,

and that Mazzy Star album.

Noah wanted to find Mazzy Star, he wondered

if they had become bipolar cowboys.

She started texting, while

I was at Vons on Lake Mead.

I had stopped texting and sending emails,

didn’t know what to say.

But I’ve been feeling better lately, the pills

are causing smoother neural connections.

(The old Noah

is slowly returning. But not quite there.)

I called her in the Vons parking lot. She sounded

nice, she kept laughing,

(her laughter felt like heaven to him, he could

hear the heaven in her giggles)

and she let me

talk a lot. (He has been talking so much lately, just words

and words, come and come.)

She let me speak so many words. There was

no fighting

no condescending remarks

no blaming.

A new peace had come, laughter had come,

She hated being embarrassed.

A proud Italian-Catholic girl, she takes the male role,

never lets her emotions become untamed.

She told him how she saw an old friend

in front of a coffee shop, Lake Erie a ten minute

walk away, the icy waves crashing, snow on the

branches,

snow pushed into high piles, winter coats,

big hats covering ears.

She saw an old flame from five years smoking, she said

her big sunglasses were on, and hoped

he did not see her, she couldn’t walk alone

the streets of Cleveland, too many chances

for embarrassment.

She told me her new boy was wholesome. She said,

“You are not wholesome.”

It is true, I am not wholesome.

I could hear her voice grow weak, I wasn’t talking

of serious things, just talking, but her voice,

it became delicate, like she was choking, she could

only answer yes or no, then it hit me,

she was crying.

And she was trying hard to make sure I didn’t notice.

I saw her face, in her bedroom, in Cleveland, Ohio.

She didn’t like crying, such a weak expression,

she felt

embarrassed.

We got off the phone soon after,

I sent her a text

“One day you’ll embarrass yourself

in front of me

and it will be the greatest day of your life.”

She never texted back. I imagined she smiled,

then went to the bathroom and cried, maybe looked

in the mirror and felt the

hard hard

confusion.

The hard hard

“how”

(She actually rolled her eyes and went back to texting her new boy.)