1-the magician:

I juggled electricity, once.
from that instance, theories resolved
into impish calculations.

I unveiled nature's secrets idly
as strippers danced: another kind of phenomena.
occam's razor was my favorite tool,
shaped by long aquaintance with my hand and mind.
I cracked safes to amuse myself.

I placed o-rings in ice water to explain death.
beating charlatans at their own game was
my pastime. no illusions ever obscured my vision:
I was the only human to first watch the atomic bomb
convulse and engulf the clouds
with the naked eye.

fools, deans, and laureates alike fell to my hatred of suits.
a nobel prize didn't lend gravitas;
my practical jokes continued.

"But I don’t have to know an answer.
I don’t feel frightened
by not knowing
things,
by being
lost
in the mysterious universe
without having any purpose,
which is the way it really is,
as far as I can tell, possibly.
It doesn't frighten me..."

is what I told my apprentices, once.

QED: antiparticles simply move backward in time.
once I learned this trick, life became simple.

my last words, scrawled on a blackboard
in transitory chalk:
What I can not create I can not understand.

who am i?