What I want from Al-Quds
isn’t what God wished for;
not streets visited by history
to the dance of a quick sacrifice and grown crowded.
Al-Quds contains sweeter things,
like evening gathering its kin to the bar
to make sleep bloodshot come morning.
In the city I have a girl-friend
not from the same stock as me,
a real honey
of the crab-apple confession.
Weekdays in the city are fine
but my intoxication is undone by the weekend
which resembles me in growing more dangerous
whenever the religious futilely clamour.
Being in Jerusalem
doesn’t benefit the beneficiary
nor does her complaint
at the kisses of those who frisked God
at the checkpoint on the way in.
She left the city,
the girl from the crab-apple confession,
and I decided that Jerusalem
no longer contained much of any interest.
Haifa is more beautiful.

Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem.