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You journos, you’re poets on active duty,

For you can get disappeared, positively aimed at,

Even with PRESS writ all over you.

Maybe even because….

Today you’re Al-Jazeera, tomorrow

Some scruffy independent.

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And then you have your caricatures

In the press-corps, fresh from their diplomas,

Each with a degree in data-marketing…

They’ve learnt the first of the 48 Laws

So well they’re more than willing to repeat

The spiel of their senior, so as not to outshine

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Down the corridors of the Hotel CNN,

Worlds away from anyone’s front line.

Nothing to do with them,

Your ducking away as the shell is dropped

Into the mortar’s barrel, saving ears.

How hard it must be

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To feel ordinary again

And not unearthly, unless you already are.

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My homage to the murdered journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.