Leviathan
Daniel Wuenschel
The feedback was negative
The taste was sour
The leadership uninspired
The soup a mélange of emptiness
The direction was a closed door
slamming still
It smelled of the vacuum of soul-lost bodies
It grew so large, henchmen were hired to do its dirty work
It influenced every aspect of daily human life
It gave comfort to the enemy of kindness
It stole from whomever wasn't looking
and called it philanthropy
The game they played was blame
The sun they warmed under was greed
The ship they sailed in was called Fools
The numbers they read were their own creation
The pennant of their pride was
unearned income
It claims to be a family which it is
as if merely saying a thing makes it so
It came from manure in the field
yet it thinks it's an emperor of oxygen
It finds nourishment in mundane things:
blood, sweat, and years
It knows everything there is to know
but its memory is tabula rasa
It is a mechanical being
that bites the purse that feeds it
The music that came out of it was flat
The work it did was by someone else
The bricks of its foundation were laid by human hands
The ledgers of its industry leaked a balance of mucus
The tidal wave didn't break
for lunch
It wasn't what I expected
It wasn't looking for anything
It wasn't free
It wasn't my friend
It wasn't what it wanted
to be
The world is much larger than it
The people outside it knew how to love
The clock towers beyond its walls grew ivy
The skin of the earth healed around it
The little man it stepped on
walked away
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1968, Daniel Wuenschel now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1987, he has worked as a bookseller and as a museum professional. Wuenschel also dealt in the book trade at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Harvard Art Museums before managing the Grolier Poetry Book Shop. He is currently Library Assistant at the Cambridge Public Library, where he catalogues new materials and works the circulation desk.
