The Old Man is Snoring.....

This is what it was like in the beginning. The morning after Tropical Storm Faye arrived. Before the rains never went away. Before they had to send out boats. Before there were fish in the streets, snakes in houses, baby pictures wilted and wet, floating like yesterday's garage sale signs....

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This is Kimbies front yard rolling like a river.....And then the batteries in Olivias camera went dead and the view out the window went to sea...

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But this time....On the seventh day, the river's yet to crest. Everyday more and more homes are gobbled up by mad water, racing, running, trying to escape, but with no where left to go but up.....

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up the living room walls,

down the halls,

under the swingsets,

down the slides....

under doorways,

into mailboxes,

into the backseat of cars not moved soon enough.....

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Everyday another Detour sign goes up, and another home is wrapped in yellow crime scene tape, an obscene picket fence for the news cameras...

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My friend Shimmerings said it best,

"if only we could click our heels"......

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There's no place like home.....

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Pray for the sun....

Spit.....

She stood on the patio. White patent leather sandals and cheese curl toes to the very edge of the concrete. From the kitchen I watched her blow and blow and blow, a giant "Achooooooo!", white eyelet dress billowing in the wind. "Achooo! Achoooo! Achooo!" I whispered "God bless you" but she didn't hear me, she was too busy spittin' the devil out....

Our Mama made us do that. When I fibbed that the neighbor's dog bit me in the shin, and really, it was our Princess, aggravated by being aggravated, but I couldn't risk tellin' the truth.....When I stole the Ford Fairlane, joyriding for three blocks before we finally hit traffic and bailed.....When we sold toilet paper flowers to the neighbors because we were hungry, and we weren't, but we were inventive....Our Mama made us spit the devil out......

And so tonight, I did that. Hammered up "Do not trespass" signs on the squeaky screen door and the picket fence, the psychedelic pass through to the laundrey room. It's been hell week. And we're goin' to the beach. Fate and everything ugly has raised it's rheumy arm to trip us up, to stop us in our tracks, to rock our peace. And I almost fell for it. Until I remembered to spit the devil out.....

Peace~love my friends,

If we Just make it through the night.....

Spinning....

Telephone Tag. That's how we do it. No Sirens, bullhorns, weather radios. In the pitch black sky the phone rings, too early in the morning to be a late night "I love~love~love you" call, too late in the night to be an early morning wake up call....

Seven minutes....
to pass the word, run barefoot onto the porch and yell for the neighbors..."You up?" "You?" "Yeah" "See ya when it's over".....
to gather three cats and the dog, the birth certificate box (which also holds a toothfairy letter, two shells, a butterfly wing, a zippo lighter with my initials on it, and the titles to cars I don't remember owning....
to wake up my sleeping child, now with child, and in five words or less, convince her to grab her pillow and crawl into the bathroom closet...
to say the quickie prayers...
to try Jonah's phone number one more time, again, and again....
to race back out of the closet and grab my Ruby Red's, construction boots for the afterlife....
to dive back in when I heard the sky fall.....

Three minutes in the rumbling, tumbling, swooshing, dipping, diving, tilt-a-whirl darkness....
and then unfolding,
paper dolls still stuck to the perforated edges,
bending one stretch at a time,
breaking free of the make-shift cellar...

Yup, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.....

Midnight in the garden of good and " I can't believe I'm doing this....."

I have rules. Not very many. I’m bendy when it comes to rules, but still, I do have them. And I break them. Change my mind and tighten the ropes every now and then. Change my will and skip over a few, Chinese jump rope for the soul. Change my direction, without notice, and do back flips.

Now I’ve broken all of them. Wadded them up like 3 hour old Bazooka gum, spit them into a crumpled napkin, and tossed them out the window (Minimum $500 fine for littering and I don’t give a damn!)

I’m not inclined to be wreckless. I’m a scaredy cat. I’ll toy with trouble, put my big toe in and shiver from the icy cold, laugh, and pull it out again. Do The Hokie-Pokie and do it all again. But wreckless…..

This is a little new to me….

Still, this is the year of the slinky snake. Shedding skin that didn’t fit in the first place, replacing it with psychedelic colored rings that go round and round. This is the year I’m alive. This is the year of change. The year of peace and love in neon letters stolen from the corner store. The year of the moment. When collusion is birthed from chaos.

Catch me if you can…..

Butterflies and Hurricanes......

I downloaded the song without a clue….And it freaked me out, kind of spooky at first, then I sunk into the 28th row of the orchestra pit and melted into it. I don’t know who the artist is, or where they were coming from….
just know my keywords….
that day, my feelings….
butterflies and hurricanes….


And that’s life….

The yellow butterfly, with her translucent wings, barely visible from the kitchen window, flits across the yard, dancing from blazing begonias to rotting pot of cigarette butts, she’s careless and wreckless and feminine and dainty, pointing her toes like a prima ballerina and strutting her stuff like Tina Turner….she spirals and twists and makes up her mind as she goes……


I lived through three hurricanes in a month’s time. And never saw the like of this. The damage done.

In the aftermath of the storms, the hot dirty days that followed, we drank hot beer and bathed in tepid water ladled from the neighbor’s garbage cans. We feasted on Slim Jims and hardened bagels. We slept with the windows open, the night air wailing through the broken glass, and awakened to the sun blazing and chain saws ripping through our borrowed peace. We filed insurance claims and waited, lugging our lives, as we once knew them, to the curb…

splintered, broken, waiting for the fix…..


Butterflies and Hurricanes…..

Sometimes, in the debris, stacked like pick-up sticks…we find what we were looking for all along….



The calm after the storm...
Thanksgiving leftovers…



The wish-bone .


And Butterflies are free……..

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.

The Color of The Sky

In the Aftermath

I stood on my deck, splintered boards mildewed under my bare feet, and thought for a moment what an odd bowling alley our backyards made. It had been days, maybe weeks, since the last storm, and now, with every fence down, it looked as if Mother Nature had carved an alley smack down the middle of our block. No longer protected by the waving arms of oak trees or divided by property lines, our secret lives were now exposed.
Backyards, so unlike the portrait we present to the street, are storybooks. Real-life story books. A rusty swing set , four doors down, still stands. I envisioned a young man there, sweltering in the sun, making sure the shiny new frame was meticulously level, and then affectionately drowning the legs in a pool of concrete. His little ones could touch the sky, and never-ever would that tee-pee frame teeter from their fun. I counted the houses again. Mrs. Lazaro is a widow now, her children long grown. On holidays, laughter blows over the fences like barbeque smoke. Her grandchildren.
A little to my left I see a flattened fort and the remains of a toppled tree house. The yard is over grown, lush with weeds and kudzu. The newly fallen trees look like Lincoln Logs tossed absentmindedly from heaven, landing just so on a boy’s world. Three little rascals are climbing over and under the debris .The oldest, lanky and with a mop of hair the color of damp mulch, claims his territory. He quickly mounts his flag; a brightly colored swim suit secured by duct tape. Two little fellows scramble to follow him. No one hollers out the back door to be careful. I know instinctively that when the fences go back up, the little jungle created by the hurricanes will remain there. Paradise for three little boys.
I feel like a peeping Tom here. I can suddenly tell who has matching garbage cans and which of my neighbors haven’t a clue what actually is garbage. An above the ground pool is now a crumpled pile of blue in the distance. It looks like a miniature mountain of vinyl. I have to squint to make sure it’s not just a reflection of all the blue-tarped roofs surrounding it. Whose lazy round river has been destroyed? I realize suddenly that backdoors are very different from kitchen doors or front doors. Some appear to have not been opened in years. I imagine them lined with deadbolts from the inside. Are these dog -less homes? I wonder why the inhabitants, once neighbors, now strangers, have never felt the urge to tiptoe barefooted in their pajamas through the wet grass. To gaze at the stars on sleepless nights.
I scrunch my toes on the cold, soft planks of my beloved deck. I close my eyes and pretend the towering trees are still dancing overhead; their swooping branches sprinkling morning dew into my coffee cup. The rising sun kisses me and for a moment, I’m standing at the ocean’s edge, digging my toes into the wet sand. I can almost smell the salt drifting in the breeze. This is my backyard. As I turn to open the back door, I remind myself that when this is all over, I want to hang a welcome sign here.