douglaskoke.com

Now captured and imprisoned, former Iraqi leader
Saddam Hussein is reported to pass time during his
captivity by writing poetry. The following pieces
display the brutal dictator's surprising fondness
for limericks.

There once was a man from Kirkuk,
Whose boisterous laughter had shook
The figs from the trees,
Like the autumn's spent leaves,
So I splayed out his entrails for
razor-beaked vultures.

---

A boy skipped along the Euphrates,
Admiring all of the ladies.
Imagine his shock,
As we cut short his walk,
And flung him beneath the treads of a
Soviet-made personnel carrier.

---

The boy was precocious and brave,
But he ought to have learned to behave.
The lad was too naughty
And now his young body
Stinks among the ziggurat of bones in my
torture stadium.

---

A cleric should mind what he preaches.
How I begged him to stop giving speeches.
He left me no choice
But to silence his voice
and use his carrion larynx as a hookah.

---

A Baath Party defector ran
From Tikrif to the edge of Sudan,
He gleefully thought
He would never be caught,
And now his skull collects
cigar butts in my reading room.