by C.J. Sellers
I.
I am the mother of “Fringe” who some say is a son-of-a-bitch (that makes me the bitch of origin). I gave him the name “Taylor” but now he’s a hybrid of him now/him then so for the purposes of this poem I’ll refer to him as “Fringe Taylor”.
What of this nefarious person who was born more artist than citizen, born of an artist out on the fringe? “Spawn-of-a-fringe-bitch” (I coined a new epithet).
What of them?
I freely admit I am a Mother Bitch who encouraged a son’s phantasmagoria (read: delusions, psychosis, mania) if the allusions were just him, if the dangerous ideas were his choice; his poetry and art, his to keep or give.
I called that freedom and eschewed medication.
Sparing the rod too, I tried not to mold him too much, to belittle nor otherwise oppress except when he didn’t do the dishes or keep his room clean or clean the dog up–no Internet. I didn’t teach him to fear dirt or darkness. I didn’t send him to the public schools that prepare for future slavery, uniformity, mediocrity, and blind obedience. I didn’t encourage him to covet, to consume, crave for approval, or live on credit, and by not doing so, unleashed upon the harsh and authoritarian world, a new breed of crazy, starving artist, one without baggage.
For I insist his artists’ worth is not in what quantifiable commodities are produced.
As other mothers polish A+ report cards, praise their childrens’ conformity with pride at this promise of high-paying job, I do not hide from you my guilty pleasure to see this young man sleeping happily outside, free, more or less with a backpack of worthless stuff and a thrift store guitar just pickin’ tunes and scribbling doodles in a notebook under the stars and among The Travelers.
Any pity in my heart is reserved for myself for harboring any foolhardy expectations for what would be or that he would always be at my side.
Some say poetry is more how the words are arranged. Some say art is how the medium is plied or paint laid. Some even call conversation an art. These may be the experts who say this, maybe the sideliners, spectators, or sometime-dabblers who don’t know what it means to be free much less express freely. Some just assert their bias. While they hate the cliche, I suspect they hate it so because they may live the cliche whereas Fringe and I accept these words that come upon like second hand clothes. My son ornaments them and makes of these his own clothes; he wants to think his own thoughts; choose his own words; be his own man. Whatever comes of it = Not cliche.
And I was the reckless author of him, this living story that went on to be a song of Himself.
I am Goddess, He is my art at a distance.
II.
A doctor tells me on the phone they have my son, that he’s crazy, delusional, psychotic, maybe even schizophrenic and they have him on medication. I don’t get defensive, I am truly alarmed but my true words and reasons are unhinged as I ask appropriate questions and navigate the institutional system. Soon I’m smiling, knowing they can’t see the smile growing on my face (relishing this private freedom). I’m smiling as my heart restores itself to faith when they describe his suspicious quirks.
They don’t know how they undo their work to release him to my “protective” embrace.
They’re releasing him because they say the medication’s working and so they pack him on a bus to me so we can have Thanksgiving together and I am thankful, I don’t wait to give thanks ’til Thanksgiving: that strange holiday that supposedly celebrates celebrating coalition, good food, and mutually independent volition. I don’t believe those pioneers who broke bread with the “savages” were as frightened then as our herd of contented Americans are now, such easy pickins for The Man, so ripe for harvest.
(I can’t wait to see him.)
III.
Fringe Taylor got on the phone then and told me about The Harvesters and what “the harvest” means. He said there are belief harvesters there now, he’s there among them. (This is supposed to be more of his delusional thinking.) But I, his mother, mother of his mind, I see the metaphor and understand.
I wait for the bill to come in the mail.
While there’s time before the bus back home departs, Fringe tells me of his travels, of long walksand hunger, meals stolen, and confesses he is craving for his first “legal” whiskey in a bar he hopes to share with me, his mother, his closest family and lifelong friend. He describes drug experimentation past and done. He tells of books, ideas, and wondrous things, of strange people and places (but spares the fucks), describes beautiful fireworks observed from a mountaintop, where he spent the night in some temple and I ask if he saw the forests burn in Los Angeles. Though he was there, strangely, he did not. It was there he was found naked and wandering (read: out of his mind) and was soon incarcerated. He says he cut his dreads off while in jail, where he was sent for panhandling. But not because anyone told him to– because he saw “the signs”. (Don’t think it’s drugs, he wasn’t on them. I’ve been assured that he was tested.) He proceeds to tell me of apprenticing to a western psychic, of interstate bus rides and concert tours and crowds, of peyote and graves in New Mexico and of solitary pilgrimages to nowhere in particular, of friends he’s made, and love, about new music, and a world clock that he swears someone said connects EVERYTHING and is directed from above by four invisible people on a plate, suspended by a bird. I wonder if this is crazier than believing in God. I am so proud of him and of us, of This. How many mothers hear their sons speak and hear their souls unleashed in the words?
Doctors point “word salad”, my heart paints poetry.