to various newspaper reports of
judicial attack on diversity
in u of m law school admissions
or anywhere else for that matter:

in the compelling interest of the state
in the state’s compelling interest
a compulsive state interest
a repulsive interest as stated

this is regression and scramble
to reestablish the white & wealthy
as übermenschen in control of
law school, especially of law school

at least the university took a stand
and is keeping its feet squarely put.
as a worker at the u. i’m proud
proud of this at least, but ashamed

of this idiotic nation once again.
see—if you’re coming from a pretty
little suburb and you have every
expectation of success as assumed

and if you’ve been raised under these
systems of measuring intelligence
and aptitude with grading schematics
[they grade the minds of children like meat]

then you have every reason to believe
that you will be admitted to this very
prestigious school of law and letters
rejection is an impossibility for your sort

so when the rejection does arrive
you could go ahead on and apply
somewhere else like a reasonable
and marginally modest adult person

but none of that! instead you sue
you sue the school and in effect
say that a nigger took your place:
you want the policy changed. for you.

for you you want it changed, for you.
because this is not about anybody else
this is about your private entitlements
which seem publicly threatened. no?

and the social advancements of the last
thirty years must roll back and disappear
so that you may take your place in law.
what an auspicious beginning for your career!

for the rest of your life you can say to the world:
i personally assaulted the policies which had
only just begun to transform the profoundly warped
racist fabric of the united states of america

you may even attain the influential heights
of political office, and should this occur
we must collectively remind ourselves
of this shameful set of circumstances

which enabled you to feel that your private
sense of entitlement was not to be jinxed
by any egalitarian notions of real democracy.
your actions in this important case are for you

to reflect upon and wear on the front of
your face, to breathe through for the rest
of your life, as one breathes through a mask.
we only ask you to own this in its entirety.

for it is you at the head of a pack of very
myopic individuals who are saying "okay,
as soon as i drop this handkerchief,
everybody’s equal starting riiiight now!"

it’s entirely that foolish and unrealistic.
those policies, which you have paid so much
money to assassinate, were conceived
and set in motion to solve horrific inequities

these thirty years had only just begun to purify
our diseased and misanthropic waters
essentially: your insufferably selfish lawsuit
has nipped authentic democracy in the bud

the greatest loss in modern times is the disappearance
of anything remotely resembling a conscience.
and that, my dear, is the technical definition
of a sociopath. looking out for number one, you are.

pity the wretch who bares her teeth
in a vaccuous smile behind which lurks
a monstrously conceited civic cannibalism
pity this creature whose lawsuit makes us to gasp with shame!

michigan has a long-standing tradition of racist filth
from the klan in dearborn and howell to a much more
covert but nevertheless pernicious old-fashioned abscess
filled with self-righteous rhetoric and television syntax...

the suburbs—what vacant-eyed dementia is this?
every step ever taken to solve the contradictions
of privilege and know-nothingism, soundly countered
with big gusts of money to force the issues back to hell

with money enough they will punish empowered women
with money enough they will exclude the children of the
african diaspora—with money enough as always, the members
of the original nations of this continent are to be disrespected & ignored

we always expect a backlash—and the younger folks need,
i suppose, an unforgettable context for this monied oppression
but america forgets quicker than turns the wheel of one year
and the work must be revisioned, revisited, to start all over again

what you have done will be undone. we swear it.
i hear the voice of pablo neruda, on his isla negra:
there are people who believe in change,
who have made changes,

who have made the changes work,
who have made the change
burst into flower
caramba! nobody can hold spring back!

arwulf 2001