Poets Page 2
Jenny Campbell
Poetry has run in the Campbell family for at least three generations. Jenny's own prolific poetry writing
began when a disastrous parachute jump left her stranded in the Hunter Valley for two weeks recuperation.
Since 2004, Jenny has performed her poetry in varied venues, Sydney and beyond. Her credits include winning
the NSW Writers Centre Poetry Sprint in 2004 and finalist in both the inaugural Sydney Poetry Slam 2005
and the Broadway Slam 2006. Her poems have been broadcast on community and national radio.
Jenny's war poem I Am Fallujah,was published on a number of websites including
Brussels Tribunal - click on "Poetry". In 2005 Butterflies was included in the
Live Poets Society anthology, Light On Don Bank. While Jenny considers herself a political poet, she has written a poem
about an ant, a moth and a cat. Even though she loves trees, she can't write poems about them. She gave up stand-up comedy
for serious performance poetry when the things to cry about started to outweigh things to laugh about.
Anatomy of Terror
Jenny Campbell
Beware the terror everywhere
beneath your skin and in your hair
it's in the thoughts you dread to think
it's in our leader's nervous blink.
It's terror this and terror that
please remove your welcome mat
for terror lurks and terror hides
it grips your life, but who decides
the terror here and terror there?
Invent a villain, Laissez Faire!
A glance into your neighbor's yard
may well unearth a seditious bard.
Hide your children, sell your shares
they come in ones and groups and pairs
bombing things, invading shores
they're using terror as their oars.
But don't protest or make a sound
'cause there's a lot of them around
and they could use a cluster bomb
and who could guess where that came from.
So, be you sweet or sharp of mind
they target most of human kind
they take our nature firm in hand
to help us fear them on command.
They are our leaders, more and more
to sovereign coin they pimp and whore
for oil and gas they kill, inflame
how they fear revolution's name.
They run our countries, sieze our lands
our blood and breath drips through their hands
they kick the weak and rob the poor
they transport terror door to door.
They use their journos as a prop
who spread the terror news non-stop
to make the nightmare crystal clear
they manage what we see and hear.
They pillage with psychotic lust
betray a nation's flagging trust
and then at night they go to bed
indifferent to the lives they shed.
Oh yes, our leaders terrify
and brutalize and falsify.
So if the propaganda confuses you
be alarmed: who's who in that zoo?
Copyright © Jenny Campbell August 2006