Rickety Tickety Tock

It's an old door. Crooked from birth. And the hinges wail....whine....shriek, if taken by surprise. The inside frame is notched from an endless parade of hook-n-eyes screwed in at every level, in a futile attempt to keep her tethered, and later lost to wayward windstorms, escaping dogs, and hissy fits.

She's a great door. Her melodic night time creaking, whispers to me when there's company. Her rusty morning yawn, the tell-tell sign it's time for coffee with the neighbors. Her "enough is enough" random slamming....my wooden meterologist.

The handle is way up high. Hippie Mom's answer to the baby gate way back then....I look at it now and wonder what I was thinking.....Boogie men and seven year olds could never enter without bellowing at the gate first?

She's old. And tired. And sitting in the Sunday grass with the neighbors, I wondered at her longevity. How long can a screen door last? Blowing in the wind, knocking about in storms, opened and closed a thousand times, covered in a lifetime of fingerprints.....arms wide open.....

Tonight when I came traipsing in through the dark and yanked, she didn't budge. I panicked. Yanked again. A little harder. Ka-bump! She gave way. I scooched onto the porch and she slammed. Yeah, just like her. But something felt funny. The way she resisted. Scrunched her toes into the sandy floor and wouldn't budge. I turned around and pushed her. Nothing. Pushed a little harder. Nothing. Shoved her! KA-BUMP!, I went flying back out into the blackened driveway
head first into my neighbor's smile.....

"We put magnet's on her!"

13 all over again....

She's....... back!
Friday the 13th!
Yeah baby!

You don't scare me spooky little day. With all your hype and legendary Hollywood hoo-hah! I don't have Triskaidekaphobia, or paraskavedekatriphobia, or friggatriskaidekaphobia! Hell I don't even have Friday-what-if-I-don't-get-paidaphobia!

So in honor of this horrid little day, when the perfect thing to do would be to pile into a really big Belair and head to the drive-ins with a cooler of beer, and watch B-rated flicks, but we can't....because they closed them all down and turned them into creepy little Walmarts.....

I say, let's just party!

Oh yeah, and remember the ghost of Friday the 13th past.....
May she rest in peace, that wild-headed child!

Three Hundred and Sixty Five

What happens when three skinny hippies....
a poet, a philosopher and a painter,
camp out
on the
friday night
porch
drinking beer
and
7 and 7
and
running
barefoot through
each other's world?


They do this........





One scribbles with crayons,
One colors with words,
And one ties it all together....
the
butterfly effect.....


Three Hundred and Sixty Five....
Eric Bachman 2007


every string of hats from dead cowboys
each face painted with a new life;
Some found that old Boot Hill
was all of the
three hundred and sixty five
one night stands...
Every dead cowboy met his match
on that one night
he stood up to you;
my stranger


how many hats
do you own? do you wear?
how many six shooters?
three hundred sixty five
this year to the day

you shoot straight,
somewhere between the eyes
or in the the knees
sparing the heart
or at least sparing the hat--
but always the hat,
so you can paint
it shades of your lifeblood mosaic
and all the many broken but useable
blues
that you learned to sing
when we were all too young
to know where dead cowboys
hang their hats
when its time to say goodnight
with a hope that they've found a home
for one last night


Clink! To peace, love , and porch parties!

Knock-Knock, Who's there?

“You need to stay out of the sun tomorrow”

I pulled on the frayed edges of my cut-offs, twirled my cigarette in the ashtray….

“Why?”

“Your face”
“You’re getting wrinkles”

“Hmmmm”
“Is it supposed to rain tomorrow?”

“No, its supposed to be beautiful”

“Then so am I”

Vanity and arrogance dribbled from the corner of his lips like tobacco spittle on an old lady. Didn’t your Mama ever teach you if you can’t say anything nice, not to say anything at all? Hey big boy…..whatcha gotta say?

Silence.

He can’t say anything nice, so he just sits there. Stewing. Trying to dream up something else that will crawl under my very last nerve and get to me. He hates when he can’t.

I laugh.

These wrinkles aren’t from the sun, you silly fool. They’re from living. From failing. From falling. From flailing on the living room floor and living through “that” night. From laying down in the middle of the road in front of a car driven by a 16 year old maniac and bellowing “over my dead body”. From the Christmas Eve “Ma, I think she’s pregnant” revelations and the "oh, thank God she's nots". From kissing dirt and kicking it into gravesites 25-35 years too soon. From wars and ghettos and moments we weren’t poor, but broke as hell. From laughing hard and late in life. From loving and taking chances. From running, climbing, crawling to get here.

The sunshine just watercolors the lines on my face. Makes them glow in the dark. I’m proud of them. I've lived through them.

I believe in peace and love…

Take that, and put it,
Where the sun doesn’t shine!

Slammed....

It’s just a crooked screen door. Kind of Florida-like, kind of Victorian, kind of 50ish. One of those. It’s the rusty hinges that do me. The cheap haunted house sound they make. The way they pro-create their own tainted WD40, oozing like dirty glue, dripping down the door frame.

The hinges. My doorbell. My pit bull. The way I know if my next door neighbor, Maggie, is ready for coffee…sneaking over in her pajamas on Saturday morning ,hangover plastered on her face….if my Father has lumbered up the drive-way , "The beer-garden-fairy", on Friday afternoon, to have his “dearest darling daughter” chat, if my son has successfully stumbled past the benches and made it as far as the screened porch to make bodily noises and expel his Friday night at my feet. But, made it home Alive.

It’s the way I know if the mailman, who has had a crush on me since 1999, has left a package from SLB, loitering if he thinks I’m at home. The way I know if Daniel got my cut-off notices in his mailbox again, and is slipping them discretely onto the outdoor coffee table.

It’s the announcement.

Anyone that rings the real doorbell, stands on the front porch, and leans past the wasp nests, through the bouganvilla,to put their dirty little fingers on the front door button, is a stranger. God, I hate that sound. The ringy ding screams trouble. On the other side of that noise stand cops, Religious witnesses, pizza deliveries to the wrong address, men in uniforms selling fertilizer, frozen steaks, and serving subpoenas. I have furniture piled up in front of that door. Even in a fire, we’d have to run out the kitchen door, couldn’t be saved by the sound of the saving grace. We don’t do the front door. It’s the screen door that spells welcome. The screen door that is dressed in an old piece of oak, carved by Skinny , that says “This house believes…”, the screen door that I slam when I’m having a hissy fit, that I flit in and out of, creaking, squeaking, slamming…..

God, I love the noise we make

When we’re not strangers……

Peace, love, and the painted porch

Artwork (c) Singleton 2006
SOLD

Through my eyes....

First of all, it didn’t start out a porch. Or a patio. Or anything close to the great outdoors. It was a 1950’s carport. I first pulled in under it’s protective roof in 1995 and immediately banged my shiney red car doors on the columns . My first car ever was a green and green 1957 Chevy and I was sure it was much bigger than Adam’s Apple, my candy red Grand Am. Why in the heck were these columns so close together? I knew instinctively, “this will never work”. Adam’s Apple was left to scorch in the sun .

Aesthetically, it was pathetic. The concrete floor was puddled with oil stains and thick with psoriatic peeling paint. But it was instantly, the entrance to my house. My kitchen door lived here. My driveway ended here. This was my new old house. And this was the way I wanted in. I stared at it.

For a long time.

And then I spent days on my knees, scraping the veneer of old paint off the floor, and intricately painting oriental rug designs on the concrete. Wallah! It’s a patio! Tacky, and hot as hell, I was still determined to make it a welcomed place. I parked a few chairs out there, a hanging plant, and directed visitors to ENTER here.

And they did.

Because I asked them to.

Over the years, the floor was leveled, the bottom was bricked in, the windows to the world were screened. A door that squeaks like a Halloween sound track was hung, wind chimes were dangled and strung, and placed meticulously anywhere there was a breeze. The mosquitoes were banned, the lizards never took their eviction seriously and have squatter’s rights to their original domain. The columns and walls were painted. Not to match the house. Not to match the landscape. To match my world.

The furniture is painted. The doors are painted. The kitchen window is painted. Graffiti is everywhere. The words, the moments, the memories are cradled forever in a psychedelic surround-sound-style mural that engulfs the entire porch. From the street, the view is probably somewhat obnoxious. An architectural wreck piled up against the little pink and white “grandma’s house”. From under the fan, parked in my pajamas, watching the sun come up, it is home. My children grew up here…their accomplishments and passages embedded in the walls. My grandchildren scribble here. You are allowed to paint on the walls at Mimi’s house. My friends etch their presence here, autograph my life with their thoughts and takes on our world. Hurricanes are recorded here, soldiers are immortalized here. The painted porch is my welcome sign.

Anytime the light is on.