Come Home

 Come Home

How did i go so many years without knowing You?
How did i ever fool myself into thinking
that You did not love me
or that You could not love me,
or that we had somehow become separated?
How did i ever survive without
knowing Your radiant smile in my heart?
How silly of me to pretend that i was locked
outside of Your favor,
dreaming that i wandered lost in some dark and
foreign land, so very far away.
You were so close as to be
the tears in my eyes
the sorrow in my cries of anguish
the pain in my heartbreak
the passion in my anger.
And all the while, soothing my brow,
stroking my back
caressing my hair,
calling sweetly,
"My favorite one,
My dearest love,
heart of My heart,
Come home.
Come home.
O please, won't you come home."


-Frank H. Weeden

California

 California

We roared down Santa Monica
Boulevard at dawn on your motorcycle,
both of us sleepy and half-stoned from
the party we crashed.
I tipped my head back to feel the silky
wind against my neck as
palm trees illuminated against the
golden sunrise sky
waved in gentle benediction.
I'm all of twenty years old,
and laughing into the wind that morning,
I am the king of the world.

-Frank H. Weeden

Sea Bottle

 Sea Bottle

Sway in the wind
You are all around me like snowflakes and I sign Your name in the stars
Sigh Your name in the darkness
Pour my loneliness and this ache and that longing into a bottle and cast it into the sea.
I will wait all night on the sand for You.
Will You uncork this bottle pour its contents into God's dreaming mind
and will there come a stargleam of that Great Love?
I shall wait -- years, if I must -- for the glitter of Your returning message, borne upon
the tides, until it comes to rest at my bare feet
and with my heart exploding in diamondshower birdsong tears,
clutch Your voice to my heart and become a seadrop of joy.

-Frank H. Weeden

Season's End

 Season's End

Meeting here in this place
On a night like tonight beside
The raging sea
Highway shouting down from
Above like a roaring, idiot god...

Your face illuminated
By dumb headlights,
Pale and ugly with
Sorrow-smeared make-up

No words left for us, My Love,
Not one...

Wind tearing your hair
Ripping the saw-grass beneath our feet,
Hurling trash left by tourists long gone

Meeting here in this place
Tonight, the last night,
Weary, crushed, and bleak,
In the rags of faith

No words left for us, My Love,
Not one...

In the end, we stumble home through
A cold world, numb with pain, broken like
Dolls, to lie on a hard bed

Gazing silently, desperately at the ceiling,
Waiting all night for something to happen,
While blaring bullhorns broadcast the
End of the world through empty streets

No words left for us, My Love,
No words at all...


-Frank H. Weeden

Sept. 16, 2009 (1990)

The Killing Of The Toad

The Killing Of The Toad

 Vision blurring eyelid swelling softens all

the jagged corners of everything

Stark sunlight lances my eyeballs

shooting bomb-blast headaches of

pinwheel colors screaming,

"I HAVE SEEN HIM! HE IS AMONG US NOW!

THE END IS NEAR!

REPENT!"

I have seen the Toad of Darkness writhing

glistening and black in my throat after

studying my open mouth in the mirror with

my new eyes. Blue eyes. Blue flies...

My hands disappeared for a long time,

meltfading bones crumbling to ashes.

But they are back; different somehow...

Cunning disease that has learned to

chameleon itself as flesh...

Headache headache headache...

Maybe just one more aspirin or

five or losing count how many empty

bottle bought just this morning sleepy

sleepy sleepy sleep comes difficult for

the toad wriggles with knowing that

the abode of the toad grows cold as

my eyes fold like origami cranes and

pain fades fade fading....

black cranes swoopdiving to take me

take me

take me

to the end of the black ribbon highway that

stretches to the horizon flatline

flatline

flatline

flatline...

-Frank

Withdrawal

Emerging seventeen miles high

into pristine azure silence that

prickles my skin with

icy splinters of lucidity.

Deafening absence of sound

and I'm creeping upside down on

the arching reaching stretching dome of

the sky like an insect

I kick a hole in a pane and through

the shattered and falling pieces

my hand releases

my clutching desperate grip on the very edge.

edge…

edge...

And sleepdrift-swimming into the eternal chasm of space

smiling in drowsy farewell, my eyes close, and

I dive, a silvery shimmer of flashing scales,

into leagues of cobalt repose.

Frank H. Weeden

2002

Autumn

 Ah, Autumn. Most ambiguous and fickle of all seasons. Swathed in flaming colors, how quickly you give way to drab brown and murderous frost. Season of endings, of closure, mercilessly rending the gay raiment of summer, until all that is left of her bright cheer is skeletal branches rattling like restless bones in the chill wind. How shall I eulogize her sighing death when I am consumed with malaise and unable to find that which I can’t remember losing?

Ah, Autumn. I raise my glass of Bordeaux in a toast to your colors washing endlessly past my window. Clad in sturdy woolen sweater and jeans, I meander slowly through thick leaves to crest a rolling hill of stiff brown grass, to read Rimbaud under a great and spreading tree. Wise old oak, having released your leaves with scarcely a sigh, your great peace is a comfort, even as the sorrow of seasons past is forever marked upon your rugged face. You are beautiful, and you soothe my spirit that even now, tosses and turns within me like the tumbling breeze.

Ah, Autumn. Dignified lady, robed in green and gold, your auburn hair wild and wound with spider webs and dew. You slip soundlessly through these woods, your gentle countenance alive with roses that bloom in your fair cheeks. Your compassionate smile warms me and your butterfly caress on my brow quiets my soul. Grief slips away as downy peace spreads through me, and while you trade a knowing smile with the venerable oak, I drift to sleep in munificent sunlight.

-FHW

1998 

Picture found on Google