Ice Cream Poem by Thabani Khumalo

I should have learned to raise myself a bit more adroitly -
perhaps like a shark that dives deep beneath the salty seas,
then, I'd have managed to abrogate indeed
my possessive demon of a lifelong alimentary starvation -
which is a purest form of a polluting mental litter.
I would have evaded the concocted words of how
my body misfits the credential of decent work at some corner office at the top
and a living wage to nourish my body upon the foreign soils.

Alone, I face the day with a leery eye around every existential turn
under an overcast sky and the consistently promising rain,
I ring the Christmas bell beneath the handle bars of a tricycle
and hear each tangle disorient my anguished brain
by its loudest curse of a densesitizing metallic noise,
I sweat profusely until I have a mass of salt
accumulating on every part of my fatigued body
till I'm as sour as the ocean's bitter taste,
I wheel the chain along the roads across the land for monetary gain
while everybody else enjoys the pagan freedom
to worship the almighty God in the easy spring.

People will sing at a church about some of their lingering, nagging fears
and bombard the minister, in a shiny tailored suit,
with many gifts of stacking up physical money from the bank.
They, sometimes, sit across the road and slowly get inebriated
with gallons after gallons of very strong expensive drink,
cigarettes burning smolders between their fingertips
even if it is against the lurid sunshine, they will opt
to fume in continuous puffs of relief episodes,
but nobody will buy ice cream from me on a cloudy day -
not even an innocent little child with sweet sugar blues!
and I will not be able to spend a single note of paper money at the retail store
on a good bread loaf as should afford any living man.
Where is the bill of rights when it has to work for me?
Where are the Gods when they should answer my needful prayers?
Has God forgotten about the physical money
that he owes me for the amount of love
I have given to the people I haven't made?