Assad Visits Homs

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.

(27 Nov 2012)

Headline NY Times, 17 Sept. 2016: 

                                    His Grip Secure, Assad Smiles While Syria Burns