The Pop Star

after William Blake

Britney Spears has found a new love – tigers. The singer has posted a tribute to the endangered big cats on her official website, in which she says she shares the same “love, lust, danger, warmth and adventure” as the ferocious animals. She writes: “I’m mesmerised by tigers… they almost have a sense of mysteriousness about them.”

Pop star, pop star burning bright
on a TV show tonight
pert and pleasing to the eye.
How do you know that you are free?

In what distant clubs or bars
did you yearn to reach the stars?
On whose backs did you climb
to get yourself from out the slime?

And what mogul told you art
was not the way to the people’s heart?
And when you heard the pulsing beat
what dread hand and what dread feet?

What, the alcohol? What cocaine?
In what furnace stews your brain?
What, the contract? What dread grasp
caught you in its deadly clasp?

When journalists curse the name of Spears
will it be worth the endless tears?
Will you smile when you see your work
or will nagging doubts still lurk?

Pop star, pop star burning bright
on a TV show tonight
pert and pleasing to the eye.
Dare you assume that you are free?