Dogging It

Perhaps you may have noticed
       how charlatans and quacks
how experts at all that's half-assed
how the gamut of hoaxers
              poseurs and pretenders

how all manner of impostor
       including jostlers
       for spots on the roster
       of probity's foremost offenders

       are all — while hoping like hell
              none will sniff out their tell
              and call their risible bluff —

how they're all   oddly enough
not so unlike those not so blessed
       with the right duplicitous stuff;
how they're all
not so dissimilar from those
who're dissembling-gene deficient

       or who   due to self-restraint
       lack of ambition or simple sloth
              appear to be cut
              from a less contriving cloth.


Both groups  after all
              are not so very different
since regardless of the parts we play
we're mostly only  sufficiently smart
       to trick ourselves into thinking

that we know a good thing or two
              about things about which
                            we haven't a clue

yet we're seldom perceptive enough
       to notice we're nearly as dim
              about things we certainly do.


At minimum
knowledge — like embarrassment —
       requires a modicum of awareness

which is why we so often resemble
that inconceivably oblivious
pooch   in the poshest of settings
       in a scene which is otherwise civil

as it humps the leg of a human
who's none too enthused with the union
       in the comically awkward presence
              of a gaggle of giggling kids
              and a clutch of uneasy parents.


The fact is  that as with unbridled Fido
we're never the least bit embarrassed
by things we don't  or can't apprehend

so much so
that much of what we claim to know
we mostly don't     and likely never will

blind as we are to all but our own
confined tiny world   like a naughty dog
       lost in the fog of its leg-locked thrill.