(NaPoWriMo Challenge: April 26, 2014)


The more one knows, the less one believes;
He who knows nothing, doubts nothing:
theoretical aphorism, deliverance in the dictum.

This week my father fixed our sliding glass door.
We had no oil for the dried out runners.
He used an anti-stick, cooking spray instead.

His idea was a tango: part knowledge
and part belief. You use what you can
to make the door open or close.

Trillions of videos on the Internet,
tutorials and poems
to step-by-step you through.

Has it all been said, though?
Has too much been said?
Can you never say enough—

trying to make the parts work
between the known and the unknown?
You believe in words

like canola, the oil that keeps us together
and keeps us apart. The doors stick
halfway open and halfway closed.

Trillions of ideas to nudge us north or south.
Knowledge is power and yet you yield to belief.
What you don’t know can’t outsmart you.