By Mark A. Leon

Every day I think of you
Every night the same dream
A world with you by my side
In your eyes, I see your faith reflect into my soul

Sitting on the swing under the warm Southern sky
Spelling our names in pine cones with cotton fields not far behind

Remember me as I remember you
Never forgetting that Southern love, that first love, that first moment

This beautiful misery of seeing you for the last time
A perfection of God’s creation
Cherish in 8MM in the forefront of my mind

Behind the cotton fields
Under the pale moonlight
I held you close until the end of time
Time shortened faster than I could catch my breath

The slide show in my mind so clean
Lips as smooth as a glass of Southern moonshine
Love as deep as the Lowcountry marshlands
Promises as safe as my heart on a line

A tragic flaw in our perfection
A hurricane to wipe away our beachfront sunrise
A time lost, but not forgotten

Cotton fields
White as the innocence in your eyes
Pure as the affection your shared
Soft as the skin I miss holding so tight
A woman, crisp as the morning air
A mother, protector of the gift of life

I look around now and all I see are reminders of what might be
To walk in those cotton fields again
A dream, a wish, a sacred vow said in silence in the darkened night

You can’t always get as Jagger said
But are you the one I need….

By Mark A. Leon

These are the last words I need to say
The final thoughts on a world without spirit
Visionless
Lifeless
A loaded gun ignited by the gunpowder of hate

Born without emotion
A skeleton on the strings of the media taunting us with celebrity this, trend that
Wanderers, growing, growing to an explosion implosion

Free thinkers without a single thought
Free spirits without a place to go
Innovators in a world where it has all been done
Our popularity defined by a brand

Jimmy Cho, Starbucks, Tesla, Apple
Alexa, shut it all done
Shut down the mechanism of time
Alexa, go back to a time when you were not a glimmer
Before you ruled the Earth

Innovation
Technology
Punchlines of natural destruction
Burn the tower and destroy the beast
The Monster is unleashed
With his unnatural strength, he is choking us with the cancer of our own devices

Mother Earth, our garbage can
Green bucket plastic
Blue bucket paper
Red bucket Styrofoam
Give us your tired, your hungry, your vodka bottle, whiskey and beer
Puke on the seeds of life

A wasteland no rainbow can cure

Greed and hunger are twins separated at birth
Both manipulating us to feel or steal
A dirty vet with a cardboard sign, his only identity
A sailor yachting at sea disrupting the natural order of the ocean
A collector purchasing the art of a dead pauper for 20 million dollars
A child crying for just one meal as the bugs swarm his tethered body gnawing at the flesh

Cryptocurrency, an invisible disease
Bankrupting our souls with the perfect dream

Companies swallowing each other up, like predator to prey
Soon, no prey will walk this Earth
Soon, no food will inhabit our stomachs
Soon, the poets will hide
Soon, our souls will be run by AI

This must be my last words
Because they no longer find faith in the lost
No longer heal the wounded
No longer hold your hand to the promised land
Most of all, no longer remind you to dream

Goodbye my love
To the graces of the almighty