Noah Cicero: Bipolar Cowboy

June 2011: Noah Cicero and Jordan Castro fly from Ohio to LA to film the movie Shoplifting from American Apparel . Jordan and Noah are on Adderall the entire time. Bebe Zeva shows up and smokes a few cigarettes.

August 2011: Stevie Nicks and Noah Cicero drive a car to Santa Fe, New Mexico. The cicadas scare Stevie Nicks. They go to the Palace of the Governors, the oldest building in America. Apaches sell expensive goods on the street. Stevie Nicks and Noah Cicero paint a giant picture one night.

March 2012: Stevie Nicks and Noah Cicero go to Japan to teach ESL for one year.

December 2012: Stevie Nicks and Noah Cicero go to Cambodia for one week. See Angkor Wat. There seems to be magic there, but their western minds have a hard time trying to understand it.

March 2013: Noah Cicero leaves Japan, goes back to America.

April 2013: Noah Cicero’s mentor, an old bluegrass guitarist from Kentucky, dies from lung cancer. The old man, a few years earlier on Christmas, gave him a black Martin guitar. Noah Cicero brings the guitar with him everywhere.

April 2013: Stevie Nicks leaves this reality and goes to an alternate Murakami-based reality with two moons.

May 2013: Noah Cicero flies to the Grand Canyon. At the Grand Canyon he hikes 90 miles. He sits among the desert pinyons and watches families of javelinas walk by. He meets an old Navajo woman. She teaches him a few words of Navajo.

September 2013: Goes to Las Vegas for two weeks, then flies back to Ohio for two weeks. Stays at his parents’ house. He rides a bicycle around the old neighborhood. Noah Cicero and his friend Bernice, a 31-year-old woman who is a nurse and basically takes care of Noah Cicero, drive a 64-year-old woman, a 15-year-old boy named James, and two cats across America to Las Vegas in a rented Chrysler minivan.

October 2013: Noah Cicero lives in Las Vegas, cannot find a job.

October 2013: Chiungyi visits Las Vegas for 12 days. They go to Zion National Park.

November 2013: Noah Cicero’s friend Nicky visits from Santa Fe, New Mexico. They go to Valley of Fire State Park.

December 2013: Noah Cicero still has no job. He drinks every night listening to sad songs by George Jones on his adobe porch. No matter how much he drinks he can’t forget her.

January 2014: Noah Cicero and Bernice visit Death Valley. They walk into the Ubehebe where humans came from Coyote’s basket.

January 2014: Noah Cicero moves to Scotts Mills, Oregon to live in an A-frame house in the forest on an old logging road. He spends most of his days alone walking the forest with a yellow labrador named Fin. He spends the days reading Bodhidharma and Chuang Tzu.

March 2014: Noah Cicero moves to Portland, Oregon for several weeks before suffering a total nervous breakdown and driving back to Las Vegas.

March 2014: Returns to Las Vegas. Seeks medical help, gets on medication.

April 2014: There are no more transmissions from Stevie Nicks from the world of two moons. Noah Cicero tells himself she was eaten by an unknown creature living in the world of two moons.

April/May 2014: Noah Cicero writes this book of poetry.

July 2014: Noah Cicero lives in Las Vegas, feels peaceful. He has direction, not a goal but a direction. He has a job and friends and he feels okay. Bebe Zeva somehow shows up at the end. Noah Cicero gives her this amazing shirt he bought in Cambodia.

This book of love poems says nothing

about la condition humaine .

It is intimate.

Do not try to look for life answers

in this book of love poems.

The universals are not here.

Only the personals.

This book of poems

is merely a moment, a feeling.

That came from Noah Cicero in April/May 2014.

By the time this book comes out,

the Noah Cicero who wrote this book,

won’t exist.

Noah Cicero hopes this book will change him.

“How did the moon

get into your head?”

“Why did you try to stick

the earth

in your head, did you

need it all?”

After his girlfriend left,

she told him

it was over

during a car ride

to his parents’ house. He doesn’t

even remember what she said—

He felt so shocked by it,

he didn’t even notice. He

just consented—

Now he makes two scrambled eggs

instead of four.

Now he doesn’t order pizza.

This isn’t an argument,

I don’t want to win or lose

on ObamaCare or who caused

the relationship to fail,

of if mom you really loved me.

I am going to walk

to the gas station,

and on the way there, I’m going

to pick a leaf off a tree,

and play with it,

in my fingers.

I was in Oregon,

and saw a place

called Best Teriyaki.

It seemed odd,

so fucking unbelievable,

that white people came and killed

all the buffalo, wiped out or moved

into tiny spaces all the Chinook people.

Then a guy or woman from Japan, from

a country doing great in terms of development,

decided to come to Oregon, a forest where the sun

hardly ever shines, where it rains rains rains and

every white man has a beard, even if it makes him

less handsome.

And the Japanese person opens a business that has the

Best Teriyaki on the Planet Earth.

The very concept, the idea, the notion,

the phenomenological existence of

Best Teriyaki proved to me that the universe

was truly weird, that anything could happen,

because if the Best Teriyaki could be located

inside a forest on the western edge of North America,

anything could be possible.

I don’t know, at times,

if you are really people, I

know you are people, I mean,

you aren’t walking on fours, and you

wear clothes. (But sometimes, when

you’re naked, I don’t know if you are human,

and get confused, that’s why I don’t

go to strip joints anymore, or have sex.)

How did you all become people? How did

you get so good at showing up on time for work,

and doing what your manager says, how did you

get so good at being detailed-oriented. There

is an ad on Craigslist for a processor, that says, “ We are

looking for someone seriously ready to start a career

and care about the work they do every day.”

Seriously the ad doesn’t even state what the

company produces? How the fuck can you people

care about some unknown something, will you even care

after you get the job?

How do you become a person?

Usually, instead of trying to get a job,

I listen to music on YouTube, instead of being

a person, I try to become the notes of songs,