Assad Visits Homs Poem by Steven Federle

Those who love their own noise are impatient of everything else. … Our noise, our business, our purposes, and all our fatuous statements about our purposes, our business, and our noise: these are the illusion.

Thomas Merton.

He came to visit today
with cameras firmly fixed
on his perfect
hair.

He came with his selected throng
to acknowledge their
devotion
as he surveyed his
demolition.

Those old buildings were such a blight,
rabid rats, full of the noise
of rebellious children,

but now, city leveled, he can see
how beautiful it all will be.

Bright new buildings soon will rise,
and scrape death from the acrid sky;

and everything will be
first rate!

….but just out of al Jazeera's frame
black smoke pours over
Baba Amr;

incinerated hopes;
dark stain.