Noah Cicero: Bipolar Cowboy

I send a text to be honest, about your sweater

still being there. But I kind of wanted you

to forget it, so I could keep it. And sometimes

I could wear it and it would be like

I was wearing our good times in Seoul, but

you came back and took your nice sweater.

No one in the room knew what pain I was in.

There is a line from “The River Merchant’s Wife”

translated by Ezra Pound.

It reads:

“The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.”

That is how I feel.

“The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.”

If you are coming through the southwest desert,

please let me know beforehand.

and I will come out to meet you,

as far as Phoenix.

I haven’t called my parents

in three weeks.

I couldn’t call them.

What was the update?

Father Mother

I have no hope.

My brother your son

also had no hope,

and he killed himself.

I have no hope, too.

I can barely function anymore,

I have to take pills

to walk from my bedroom

to the living room.

Sometimes I get enough

discipline to drive to Starbucks.

I feel no pressure to impress you,

to impress anyone anymore.

And when a person loses pressure,

he has nothing to gain. Maybe I am trying

to reach enlightenment. To be

a desert sage.

But you are from Ohio, you know

nothing of sages. You wanted me to

go to college, get a job, find a wife,

get a mortgage, there is nothing

wrong with that. I know a lot of people

who have followed that track,

and have become happy.

I am sincerely sorry,

I could not be normal.

In any way.

I know it took a lot of time,

a lot of effort,

a lot of money,

to get me grown,

and I didn’t become

anything like you. I live

2,000 miles away from you.

And I don’t even have a job.

I’m 33 now, I am a little old.

I don’t think I can catch up,

and become a normal person.

I’m not sure if I even want to live

anymore. But I will keep living,

one suicide is enough

for a family.

When I was little,

I had a long gravel driveway

in broadleaf Ohio

in abandoned steel mill Ohio

in Chevy plant Ohio

where my mother worked.

She worked the

3 to 11 shift.

I never saw her after school,

or before school to be honest.

I made my own breakfast.

Some nights I couldn’t sleep,

till her car came rolling

up the long driveway

till I heard the gravel rattle.

Till I knew she was home,

in the house with me.

Then I would fall asleep,

but now I sleep alone.

And the gravel does not rattle.

Every woman I ever loved,

is loved by another.

At 11:45pm I listen

for any car, even tires

spinning over smooth pavement.

When I hear the sound

I am looking for,

I tell myself it is you,

you are home

and I sleep.

I have been watching

a lot of Near Death Experience

videos on YouTube.

I went outside

took a walk

and tried to imagine God—

based on the NDE videos.

God seemed like an all-loving

ball of super energy thing.

I heard a philosophy prof

say once, he didn’t think

there was a God because

his sister died. Seemed

really trite. If there was a super

ball of awesome energy thing

that could create universes,

seems like that Thing

would know the long-term

and understand it, and we could

not understand it, because

we are finite and consumed

with attachment and the immediate.

But the philosophy prof loved

his sister, and he needed

to hate something.

But Christians, and Muslims

Hindus and Buddhists

need someone to hate too.

Seems like the super orb

of incredible energy infinite thing

probably understands

the human hate thing.

I have actually hated

every philosophy professor

I’ve ever met.

There is a lesbian

sitting at the next table

at this Starbucks, she

has a bracelet that says

“fuck off” and a really bad haircut.

A black woman in her forties just

walked by, she had giant hair,

looked like she worked at a boring

middle-class job.

A guy dressed in army fatigues

is sitting at another table.

According to religious people

God can’t love all three

of these different people.

But for some reason

Starbucks will serve everyone

regardless of their chosen

bullshit lifestyle, but God

has less sympathy, less empathy,

less love than Starbucks, lol

lol lol lol lol lol lol lol. Assholes.

The thing that scares people

the most about God

is that he does not discriminate.

That something could love stupid Republicans who hate

women and homos, and it loves

the stupid homos who wear “fuck off”

bracelets, and all the stupid people

in prisons with 4th grade reading levels,

all the stupid people who eat

corn-syrup-based foods, all the

stupid assholes who fight

in the military for the corporations,

and all the stupid assholes

who work at corporations,

and probably even all the stupid

assholes working at factories

in China, all the stupid assholes

in Africa who have insane notions

about how to cure AIDS. All

the stupid assholes, every

single stupid asshole

that ever lived, and this

ball of super love energy thing

might even love animals, insects, plant life,

stupid pigeons

stupid palm trees,

all the stupid people who

don’t know fashion,

don’t know politics,

don’t know the Bible,

don’t know ________

don’t know ________

all the stupid

assholes who became plastic

surgeons, all the stupid asshole

cashiers at Wal-Mart.

It is really scary to think

that some super lovely

energy thing would even

take the time to love

these stupid assholes.

According to people,

people who know things.

When you die,

you meet God,

and it feels like

love.

Like super love,

unconditional love!!!

I thought,

do I need love?

Or am I

too cool for love?

I thought about

the people who love me,

and those I love,

and how that feels,

then a small six pound cat

sat on my chest.

Then the cat

booped me.

Noah Cicero went to Wal-Mart

to get a prescription filled.

Walking through Wal-Mart

he felt tired from the anti-anxiety pill

he took in the morning.

He did feel mildly suicidal,

not that he would kill himself, but

if a magical wind swept him away

and took him to a heaven

on the moon Europa, he would

have been happy to go.

He walked among the products.

A man with prison tats,

brown teeth and a t-shirt

with holes in it.

The man had no fashion, he probably

didn’t even know what an American Apparel

even was, he couldn’t handle

an OS operating system. His house

was for sure dirty, he probably hadn’t

washed around the bathtub, ever.

He said, “Hey.”

Noah looked over. “Me?”

“Yeah you, Jesus told me