if you think
that you really
know who you are,
it most likely means
that you don't,
your body isnt
the only thing
that ages,
your experiences
grow bigger,
you're like sand
on a beach,
waiting for the wind
to pick your next
residence,
and it's all
too random.

Love’s Extreme Unction
by Michael R. Burch

Lines composed during my son Jeremy’s first high school football game (he played tuba), while I watched my wife Beth watch him.

Within the intimate chapels of her eyes—
devotions, meditations, reverence.
I find in them Love’s very residence
and hearing the ardent rapture of her sighs
I prophesy beatitudes to come,
when Love like hers commands us, “All be One!”

Keywords/Tags: mother, son, love, extreme unction, devotions, meditation, reverence, love’s residence, beatitude, beatitudes, heaven, unity, solidarity, togetherness, oneness, one

We marched to the words of "We Shall Overcome"
courting justice to walk at our side,
seared into memory with the heat of sun

brothers and sisters, arms linked one to one
beneath that day star's unblinking eye,
we marched to the words, "We Shall Overcome."

We swore an oath to forego the gun,
to carry only freedom's cry
beneath the impassive afternoon sun,

through bludgeon and cudgel one by one,
each truncheon summoning others to rise,
to join in the words "We Shall Overcome."

As we embraced, the marching done,
a crosshairs trained a ******’s eye
to wrench malice from the indifferent sun

to hew a path in blood and bone,
to rend flesh
                     and a rasping
                                              fatal sigh . . .
in the fading caress of the afternoon sun.

Beneath the eternal arc of the sun,
again we will muster side by side,
a sanctified chorus, whose song will be sung,
let our marching echo...
                                          "We Shall Overcome.”

Copyright © 2018 Gary Brocks

Conceived after visiting the LORRAINE HOTEL (Memphis, Tennessee), the site of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thursday, 4 April 1968.
In 1991 the NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS MUSEUM at the LORRAINE HOTEL was opened to the public.

"We Shall Overcome”, an anthem, title and refrain, of the American Civil Rights Movement of the mid 20th century.

”Home is where the heart is”
Yes, but home is not confined to these four walls
in which we reside.

Home,
is more than just a house
made by

    human
    
                        hands.

It is in the heart,
     that pumps the very blood that runs thicker
than water.
But water is needed for blood to keep running
So,
       what. is. home?

Home,
   is who we are
   is where we belong

Home,
is how we have become,
how we have come
a long way from,
and where we return to.

Like nomads,
it is where we are found.


Home,
      is where we are...