"We Only Perceive Our Bodies," "Sounds of High Tide in the Fog," and "Foghorn"
“We Only Perceive Our Bodies”
—Democritus
All the manufacturing in the world
Post-haste, demented, free
Peoples the infliction of virtue
Without the fanciful satisfaction
Of mascara, tootle-loo, dee-do
The praise evaporates the evangel
All horns presuppose godliness
Don’t they, you hideous, ambulatory—
Premium, devious—peaceloving, halt—
We see (without feeling eager)
Slime dressed as virginity
Impatience as lengthwise severance
Imitation as fraud
Without planets to breed hope
These toys demonstrate nothing
But the primary challenge to society
Eating is all selfish
Damned hills mined of necessity
Frankensteins barking till Doomsday
All the spare parts to rarify
They really ice the migraine dead
Doozey up and explode coffee earrings
Superstitions and the perfect Rorschach bandage
Breathtaking, route-faking, peace-making
Without this organized infrastructure
Beauty potential layaway
We say no to bugs, bosco, troublemaking
Go get the earrings before they explode
Hybrid doughnuts
All the Greco-Roman theater afternoons
Felt in the bones of man’s refuge
Tight, proposed, fortunate, psyched
Holistic, true, fell, prescient
Demonstrable, farfetched, equatorial, disdainful
Tedious, time-consuming, framed…
Naps beef up the devious buzz
And seasons plan the blue parades
Talk for soluble parting pines
Tops for soothing alligator side
Don’t baste the same program switch
To feel the heat of the sonnet sun
To decent omnivorous tubes
All hunger explains narrowmindedness
The earaches capture our dignity
To breathe the wholesome session
Ammunition for dogs when they alight
Without Johnny and Jimmy and Francis
Homeward bound to their board
Of fennel and negativity—
All the stakes presuppose this rest
To break the mouth of its nape
Sounds of High Tide in the Fog
I don’t know a pillbox from a ukulele in this grinding place
Take the money and run through the holiday sauce
In the event of this telescopic egg carton
Strawberry blonde cola and filibuster of the placeholder
From a silver perspective, indistinct and parallel
This foghorn’s insistence, the argument on behalf of rhyming ice ages
Underneath the Roger-and-out (po’boy)
Oh baby, the rotting telephone splinters our minds inside and out
Enough of the chipmunk’s razzmatazz and (perpendicular chancelry)
Underneath the foghorns ad infinitum
The foghorn tosses its lasso a long way, and then we begin to be ground down, and then
this careless certainty
Our minds are ground to hamburger, and then we are taken to an invisible place
The meat grinder repeats itself every few feet—like a lozenge…running wild
You won’t believe the effect of the meat grinder on the hootin’ owl
The foghorn randomizes this thrashing of arguments in the sun of penitence
This argument, lazy but incontestable, billowing, in Bilbao
One-note, for once, ground to pieces, maintained
The foghorn blocks our positive cries for attention (our inspissation and purpureal larvae
and hijinks talkshow)
See, thrill pieces separate statements
The foghorn fading to this thudding crowd near the grinder
The foghorn returns the call, the cutters rise, silly putty and all
Inside this belief system, this iron piss, this inside-out race
The foghorn in an impure environment (bearing the stigmata of piney dollops)
Gone, gone, going gone
This restaurant will not publicize Chamber slime
The foghorn speaks sense, to these disunited, almond joy
If anyone, pintsize or hallway
Nobody will tell you the foghorn points an index finger inside this placard
The foghorn raises its voice and hoi pollois (with our ice cream)
(If they think, for one minute, inside our realistic honeycomb)
First, I need to tell you, the rice paper, Daddy
The foghorn bleats—this has been settled, right?—the oildrum
You’re no more likely to tarnish an apple with your little grinder
Under the circumstances, reminiscing, onions for all
Pincer-like, hardly echoing, like it never went away
When you wash it out, the foghorn cleaned, freed, the surface ruffles
The surface ruffles these consenting voices, small blasts in the booth
The foghorn enters our place, the water just won’t listen to the tentative surface
Come back from these places, high-tailed, the opera glass
Reason with nightmares, pool the hosking, infiltrate the lake jungle and imacious page in
our sorry operating room
Foghorn
(two notes,
then a pause)
The wrong load
of horses
singes my tooth
prays with disregard
Perhaps people
insinuated the told
And without a doubt
inside the cave
*
Rather the past
than hillbilly
illustrate eleven
origin signposts
First and foremost
almond bar
Inside the house
of the foremost
and you will play
tankard locks
before the first
tonga bump
the seasons
seminal perseverance
for pause
to tool the loot
No
No no no
opens this
proper polity
because the rhyme
plays in the sand
First before
role time (safeguard)
Oh no
the solvent logic
Before the plan
the honest mungo
don’t sandwich
the rescue here
The place
butters and tubs
Without terse
self designation (broadcast)
Why solve
the song cycle
because Tabasco
regulates these lawns
racing from hollow
to Oreo sunrise
pink umbrella
sandwich dollops
*
The monkey
illustrates the holster
Take the semblance
usher in further holograms
legislate silver
through promise
deceive
purple
reassure without
compromising consolidated
open a household
to long
and instead of acting
instead of polishing
This oven
draws a blank
Tomorrow
under suit
This silver
distragulates
This Bilbao
oven opens
![Michael Ruby Michael Ruby](https://www.unlikelystories.org/sites/default/files/Michael%20Ruby%20in%20February%202016%2C%20taken%20by%20Susan%20Brennan.jpg)
Michael Ruby is a poet, literary editor and journalist. He is the author of eight poetry books, most recently Compulsive Words (BlazeVOX, 2010), American Songbook (Ugly Duckling, 2013), The Mouth of the Bay (BlazeVOX, 2019), The Star-Spangled Banner (Station Hill, 2020) and Close Your Eyes, Visions (Station Hill, 2024). His trilogy in prose and poetry, Memories, Dreams and Inner Voices (Station Hill, 2012), includes ebooks Fleeting Memories (Ugly Duckling, 2008) and Inner Voices Heard Before Sleep (Argotist Online, 2011). His other ebooks are Close Your Eyes (Argotist, 2018) and Titles & First Lines (Mudlark, 2018). He lives in Brooklyn and worked for many years as an editor of U.S. news and political articles at The Wall Street Journal.