I first split the atom when I was twelve years old.

While waiting for my high school diploma,
I proved the Hodge conjecture
and devised my first weapon of mass destruction.

I've devised profitable patents
while waiting for microwave popcorn.

It's been decades since I sat in a barber's chair,
my best friends are pathological psychopaths
and instead of being lauded as the finest mind
humanity has ever developed,
I'm considered a criminal
a deviant
a villain.

My twelve-year-old mind found it all so simple,
never having access to Oppenheimer's notes
red hair still waiting to be born
underneath my pasty chest.
Complicated mathematic equations
like music in my mind,
and I hummed as I wrote them out,
sang aloud as I contained the reaction
that powered the lab I had in the gardener's shed
for the next two years.

Without the shadow of that invader
fluttering over my head
I could be anything.
President wasn't big enough,
standing astride worlds of finance and commerce
took less focus than urinating.
My intellect could administrate galaxies,
power contained in my all-too-human mind meat
could follow the paths of six thousand gamma waves
across seven parsecs
while making myself a sandwich
and solving world hunger.

But I can't.
Can't concentrate on curing cancer
or solving any Rubik's Cube in fourteen moves.
I can't sit down to write
all four symphonies I've had in my head
since the night I lost my virginity.

All I can do is look up in the sky
and dream about the day I'll bring it down to earth.

"Frustration: The Gospel of Lex Luthor"
By Hannibal Tabu 090423