JERUSALEM IS HELL PLACE
Jerusalem is not a street of gold,
but a graveyard of promises.
A city where prayers drown
beneath the smoke of children’s screams.
They told us it was holy—
but holiness cannot grow
where blood waters the soil.
They said it was chosen,
but chosen by whom?
By the hands that crucify again,
this time in Gaza,
this time in Africa,
this time wherever black skin
touches the earth and calls it home.
Trump shouts of god and glory,
but his god wears white hands
and armoured hearts.
His angels trade in bombs and oil,
while mothers stitch hope
into the torn clothes of the dead.
And I ask,
Who is God
when black people still wander
without land, without justice,
while prophets of profit
build temples of greed?
Where is God
when the cry of a Palestinian child
echoes the wail of Soweto,
the tear gas of Sharpeville,
the silence of Marikana?
Jerusalem is not a street of gold
it is a mirror.
Look into it,
and see the world’s hypocrisy
reflected in our own eyes.
Until justice walks barefoot
and freedom speaks in every tongue,
there will be no holy city,
no promised land,
only the promise we must become.
Your God is not mine, and my ancestors, he is just evil as Netanyahu and Trum, PW Botha.
By
Tlou Ya Phokojweng, Dr Sefoko Ramoshaba
