VULTURE NATION

“Good photographers who have been thrown out by newspapers in cost cutting exercises now find themselves trudging celebrity land, like bounty hunters in search of prey. They are on the street, eating what they kill. Certain papers will publicly claim that they allow privacy, but they’re all hungry for front-page pictures… Even if the UK papers say they will allow privacy, they may decide to publish pictures that have already been shown abroad. If… people understood the pressures, perhaps they might take a stance on whether they would buy a paper that procured pictures in an underhand way. But I doubt it. We are all like those old women knitting by the guillotine.” Mark Borkowski, Mark My Words, January 5 2007

Here they come,
a kettle of paparazzi
circling the nightclubs,
their bald heads sticky
with the glistening remains of celebrity.
On the menu tonight
it’s blue blood –
the photographers caw
and croak in desperation,
jostle for position,
their press accreditation
an urgent rush
of claw and feather
as lightning forks
from their metallic beaks.
“We’re your friends,” they sing
in close-knit, menacing harmony

They are the waste products
of cost cutting
clean up men
for all the dirty jobs
propriety has said must not be done.
They are downtrodden scavengers
ready to gorge
outside theatres, clubs and bars
who tread down on their prey
as they suck out
images of emaciated meat.

Their young wait
in homes throughout the world
nestled in newspapers, magazines
waiting for a fix
of flesh.

NB Kettle and venue are collective nouns for vultures.