20151022 (knowing)

So hard to know and not be smug

Even to think you know picturing

Others as deluded bemused or 

Willfully ignorant like the special

Aura of cognoscenti illuminati deigned

To bear secrets with which peons

Cannot be trusted or worse are

Undeserving and worst incapable

Of bearing whether it is simple

Skepticism before the faithful

Who have never entertained they

Might be wrong or magicians

Banking on the inattention of the

Gullible there is profitability in

Prophet-ability you would be

Undermining your assets if 

You shared the secrets of how

Those quarters got behind her 

Ears or where the dove went

When you turned the hat upside

Down our almost natural charity

Of showing others how to do

Things must be choked back for our

Own good I sometimes fear that’s

Why programmers made it hard

To get from one screen to another

Hit F7 you fool until another

Realized he could sell user-friendly

Programs to replace the ones that

Had you constantly dependent on

Calls to I-T like the old joke about 

The mechanic who charged fifty

Bucks just to whack a carburetor with

A small hammer to get the car started

Because he knew where to

Whack it violinists with a good

Sense of their talent and identity

Could teach unlike those who jealously

Unconsciously withheld technique from 

Their ever faltering incapable

Students who paid and despaired

Last night I watched four genii

Of physics math philosophy and

Artificial intelligence discuss the 

Limits of human understanding

Somewhat like watching a secret 

Society bandy their cant to establish 

Credentials and ascertain who 

Knew more of the inside joke 

Program sponsors did not require

They condescend to lecturees

But a little give on their part 

Would have helped the audience

Begin to know what they’re 

Explicating without feeling so like

Brilliant but inadequate schmucks

My son da computer wiz appears

In a You Tube video discussing

His and his partner’s recent work

For twenty minutes in English

I think and I knew nothing more

At the end than at the beginning

Which is what you get from 

Trespassing into the wrong club

As for the limits of human understanding

It would have been better had I

Learned more of substance

Than arrogance

c. J.S.Manista, 2015