My friend Jenny came second in the Queensland Poetry Slam finals.

The winner was Vivi Baker with her poem on The Murder of Women. I was unable to contact Ms Baker for her permission to publish her poem, that’s why this post is late, but Jenny Campbell gave me her poem to share. I hope you like it. Congratulations to both women poets who will now enter the Australian national finals.

I wanted an image to go with Jenny’s poem and there was so many to  choose from, but I thought this one was appropriate. It was one of the many Trump images on Digital Arts UK – following his election last year.

 

Anatomy of Terror – Jenny Campbell.

 

Beware the terror everywhere

beneath your skin and in your stare

it’s in the thoughts you dread to think

it’s in our leaders guilty blink.

 

Its terror this and terror that

please remove your welcome mat

for terror lurks and terror hides

it grips our lives, but who decides

 

the terror here and terror there?

Invent a villain, Laissez Faire!

A glance into your neighbor’s yard

may reveal a suspicious bard.

 

Hide your children! Take the stairs!

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 world leaders, close the door.

To sovereign coin they pimp and whore.

For oil and gas they kill, inflame

but how they fear revolution’s name.

 

They run our countries, seize our lands

our blood and breath drips through their hands

they kick the weak and rob the poor

delivering 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 their nation’s flagging trust

and then at night they go to bed

indifferent to the lives they shed.

 

Oh yes, world leaders terrify

and brutalize and falsify.

So if the ‘terror’ gets to you

be alarmed: they built this zoo!

 

Jenny Campbell ©