by Stan Sanvel Rubin
By all that is holy, I decree
that the murderers stop murdering,
running up their piles of corpses
like an accountant totaling numbers
at a desk In the name of anyone's
god, lower or upper case, I insist
that children should not fall anymore like rotten figs,
that the demon of hatred for others be abolished That a day of the fulfillment
of dreams is at hand That soon the darkness,
as we have called it for centuries, will lift like smog
and reveal more than the indifferent wings of angels
trumpeting their stratospheric silence The face
of humans truly and readily waking
to what was here all the time That
even my own past selves, who are not
the best of buddies, will collide
like Abbot and Costello rounding too many corners running away from each other
Will ask for forgiveness and mean it
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Stan Sanvel Rubin’s poetry has appeared in many national journals. The author of four full-length collections, including There. Here. (2013), he also writes essay-reviews for Water~Stone Review (Hamline University). His interviews with writers have been widely published. After serving as Director of the Brockport Writers Forum & Videotape Library (SUNY) for many years, he moved to the Olympic Peninsula in 2003 as founding director of the Rainier Writing Workshop low-residency MFA at Pacific Lutheran University. Originally from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Stan is a resident of the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state.
