The owners and management get off running a great team.

The players get off being a great team.

The fans get off watching a great team play in their honour.

So occupy the stadiums in a carnival of ridicule,
occupy money’s shame. Money will be,
there is plenty here, and much is made,
well beyond any official party to this dispute
(stand with the workers and small time owners
that depend on the game).

Shame the over devotion to money in few
and celebrate its absence in you,
at least in the moment you watch hockey.

Celebrate your resistance outside the gates,
gate 4, gate 7, whatever gates there be actual gates to gather at,
so as to make literal and thus more media effective the metaphor
of barbarians at the gates, for do not doubt but that we must be as barbarians,
as pirates, as a land turtle dipping into the sea but not so deep
as so his diamond-encrusted top-of-the-shell would get sea-wet.

And know that even if we mock uselessly, if our absurdity
only adds a bit to the building smog, an unuseful need
we have met for ourselves and for each other,
for then we will have mocked together, as we mock
seriously together for our teams. Don’t give that to them too.

Let us give it them with a side of shame and no profit,
backed up by the laughter, which has narrowed,
which, if you get near it now, you’ll know
as some abundant, covered well. You recognize its form,
and hear it, underground, a river not noticing it’s been buried.
You recognize it into a weapon.