Idol [rev.] Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Butterfly struggling to exit a cocoon’s teeny hole,
by snipping it larger a kind onlooker aids - & the
lucky larvae emerges swollen-bodied, shrivelled
wings - watcher waits in vain for their expansion,
body to contract - but whole life is spent crawling
on the ground with still swollen body & eternally
shrivelled wings - never to fly at all -

Solicitous patron doesn’t know a cocoon’s design
needs the butterfly to struggle in squeezing thru a
tiny hole, so its body fluid is forced into wings and
readies them for flying - hard work for its freedom:
just like us - we also need struggles in our life, no
issues and we’d be paralysed - never growing as
strong & free as we should have been -

We would never fly; a small child winning a contest
is like this; stardom-imitated, high-heel in grown-up
make-up, & lavished early, growing anxious to gain
admiration, approval of fans clamouring for more of
this - leaving no space to stop, to decide on the way
forward, no time to strengthen vocal cords; no age-
appropriate repertoire to support a body under

Hormone change; muscles strained - a once-clear
voice now darkening in tone & timbre which defies
attempts to keep the sound as pure and sweet as
it was once - when the child was a 9-year-old idol