Ode to Pussy Riot: We Are All Hooligans


A Pussy Riot masque--
Faces tucked beneath cowls
They gyrate madly
Awkward Elaine-dancing-sisters
Weeble and wobble
To punk rhythms,
agitated dys-syncopated
sixteenth notes of protest.

Freedom dances in their heads
head-clanging freedom songs
Thirty seconds of cause célèbre
Joyful kerfuffle
Marshall McLuhan would have relished.

Congregants sizzle,
nuns shackle themselves to the foofaraw
elders shoo them from the altar.
Police indignation
hies them from the scene
where they languish in cells.


Soft-shelled crab,
Vlad the Impaler,
skin so sere
blood flows like lava
just below the surface.

Put in chains--
Free speech, they learn
Has its limits.



--Sy Roth



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