The Toughest Love You'll Ever Job


I came with two hands each tipped with sharp fingers to help a zebra people who long ago decided to separate their colors

They gave me a sun-blistered tongue that belonged to a departed step-mother and was told to talk to the father remaining

No one understands why the donkeys sing but I am here anyway and can tell you why

With a word that I can't find in my concrete monk's cell with a lizard's skull ensconced somewhere in the wall

Because my mouth with its borrowed tongue can't make the sound that blew over the next dune

To land at the feet of a man whose face I can't see, so I don't ask because I will never know him

As I know my black love my howli wrapped around the gum Arabic encrusted secret always wanted to find

Like the ants always want my bread but stopped by the universal RIM-grass a plastic bag

like me, neither iron nor skin therefore imported and foreign and holding a STATE

of VISA or hope or boredom or another sovereign emotion belonging to the plastic foto identification with two sharp hands

-Karl Adam