Pythagoras, Jesus, Stevie, and Mog

[saw]

Mog pulled back the string of his bow
the arrow raced toward the soft spot
of his game with the desire of a hungry
belly, and he reveled in the sweet vibration

much much later......and five hundred years
before the recorded birth of the man called
Jesus Christ, Pythagoras also burned
with hunger, hunger for wisdom, hunger

for knowledge, he was a radical, not the
modern variety that detonates explosives
beneath their modest garments
as a short-cut to heaven, as a supreme

sacrifice, and not the abortion clinic bomber
type that kills innocent caregivers
because of their devout beliefs
in the value of every single life, no

Pythagoras was REALLY CRAZY
he encouraged citizens to follow virtue,
believed in strict rules of conduct, common
meals, exercise, reading, philosophy

His disciples sang hymns to Apollo, used
the lyre to cure illness, recited
poetry before and after sleep, yes he was
A REAL NUTCASE, similar to one of his

contemporaries, Jesus....many were jealous of him
just like J.C., ...Xenophanes made fun of him, taunted
him. didn't buy it when he told them he could hear
the voice of a departed friend in the howls

of a beaten dog....Pythagoras' extremist views
forced him to flee for the nurturing fields
of his native southern Italy.....Jesus never got away.
Many remember Pythagoras for his trigonometry, but

he, like the fictional hunter Mog
was stimulated by the twang of the bowstring,
so he began to tinker with greater and greater lengths
of string....the musical distance between

two octave notes, creating a wondrous formula
with twelve equal parts, still the basis
for the music our culture loves, The Chromatic Scale.
fast forward...........on May 13, 1950, a new baby boy

was born, Stevland Hardaway Judkins, sightless
from day one, never coddled by mama, pushed the same
way she pushed all her kids, and by the age of twelve
this boy was making his presence known in a happening

new scene called Motown, by thirteen he recorded
Fingertips part 2, was renamed, Little Stevie Wonder
playing this instrument similar to the one carried
on the range in the back pocket of cow punchers

but.....but making the reeds sing like the wandering
ghost of Pythagoras, his love of mathematics, numbers
ratios, the vibrational nature of sound echoing over
the AM airwaves for kids hoppin' and boppin'

this young black man activating a spring loaded slide
redirecting the air flow of genius into his Hohner
Chromatic, channeling the dead
giving new life to old harmonicas from a dying breed

[still.trucking]

wonderful poem
thank you for writing

[the mingo]

Danny O'Keefe had a line in one of his songs that went "straight drapes right off the rack". Fits for me - thx saw.