The Teenager Who Sat in the Chair (Pope John XII)

Lyrics

[Verse 1]
You wore the ring at twenty, barely formed,
your prefrontal cortex still rewiring itself—
yet you moved through marble halls like you owned
the voltage of conviction, the theta waves
of a mind convinced of its own rightness.
Your synaptic pathways burned bright with hunger,
every synapse firing its long-term potentiation,
cementing want into neural architecture.

[Chorus]
You lived like the rules were written for someone else,
your body a prophecy no doctrine could contain,
you took what you wanted with both hands wide open,
and somehow that hunger made you human, made you real,
made you grin in the dark like you'd cracked the code.

[Verse 2]
The mirror neurons fired—you saw desire in every face
and mirrored it back, doubled it, sang it,
your interoception screaming what the vows tried to silence.
Cortical remapping: your brain rewired itself
around the weight of robes, around the ache of flesh
beneath silk, around the predictive coding that said
*this* is what you need, and your nervous system believed it.

[Chorus]
You lived like the rules were written for someone else,
your body a prophecy no doctrine could contain,
you took what you wanted with both hands wide open,
and somehow that hunger made you human, made you real,
made you grin in the dark like you'd cracked the code.

[Bridge]
Your axons branched toward pleasure like neurons seeking light,
neurogenesis blooming in the hippocampus—
you were *creating* yourself in real time,
each transgression a new pathway firing,
consolidating memory, burning brighter.

[Chorus]
You lived like the rules were written for someone else,
your body a prophecy no doctrine could contain,
you took what you wanted with both hands wide open,
and somehow that hunger made you human, made you real,
made you grin in the dark like you'd cracked the code.

[Outro]
Your ring still gleams in the dark of history,
a small hard brightness where doctrine met flesh,
proof that even saints were animals underneath.

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**WORD COUNT: 301 words** ✓