Pythagoras, Jesus, Stevie and Mog
Posted: September 16th, 2008, 1:02 pm
Mog pulled back the string of his bow,
the arrow raced towards his game
with the desire of a hungry belly,
he reveled in the sweet vibration........
much later and five hundred years
before the so called birth of the man
called Jesus Christ, Pythagoras also
burned with hunger, hunger for
knowledge, for wisdom......
Pythagoras was a radical, no not the kind
that detonates explosives
hidden below their outer garments
as a short cut to heaven, and not
the abortion clinic bomber
that kills innocent caregivers
because of his devout belief
in the value of every single life, No
Pythagoras was REALLY crazy.
He encouraged citizens to follow virtue,
he believed in strict rules of conduct,
common meals, exercise, reading
and philosophy, his disciples sang hymns
to Apollo, used the lyre to cure illness,
recited poetry before and after sleep,
he was a real nut case......
kinda like his contemporary Jesus,
'cause men feared him, were jealous
of him, like they were of J.C., yeah
the 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
his native Greece for the nurturing fields
of southern Italy....Jesus on the other hand
never got away.
Many remember Pythagoras for his trigonometry,
but he, like the fictional hunter Mog
was stimulated by the twang of that bow string,
so he began to tinker with greater and lesser
lengths of string, the musical distance between
two octave notes, creating a wondrous formula
with twelve equal parts, still the basis today
for the music our culture loves, The Chromatic Scale.
On May 13, 1950, a new baby boy was born,
Stevland Hardaway Judkins, sightless form day one,
never coddled by mama, pushed the same ways
as all his sisters and brothers, and by age twelve
he was making his presence known in a happening
little place called Motown, by 13, he recorded Fingertips,
was renamed Little Stevie Wonder playing an instrument
similar to the ones carried in the back pocket of range riders,
wranglers of the prairies, 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, kids hoppin' and boppin',
as this young black man activated a spring-loaded slide,
redirecting the air flow of genius into his Hohner Chromatic,
channeling the dead, bringing this harmonica he'd never seen,
to life.
the arrow raced towards his game
with the desire of a hungry belly,
he reveled in the sweet vibration........
much later and five hundred years
before the so called birth of the man
called Jesus Christ, Pythagoras also
burned with hunger, hunger for
knowledge, for wisdom......
Pythagoras was a radical, no not the kind
that detonates explosives
hidden below their outer garments
as a short cut to heaven, and not
the abortion clinic bomber
that kills innocent caregivers
because of his devout belief
in the value of every single life, No
Pythagoras was REALLY crazy.
He encouraged citizens to follow virtue,
he believed in strict rules of conduct,
common meals, exercise, reading
and philosophy, his disciples sang hymns
to Apollo, used the lyre to cure illness,
recited poetry before and after sleep,
he was a real nut case......
kinda like his contemporary Jesus,
'cause men feared him, were jealous
of him, like they were of J.C., yeah
the 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
his native Greece for the nurturing fields
of southern Italy....Jesus on the other hand
never got away.
Many remember Pythagoras for his trigonometry,
but he, like the fictional hunter Mog
was stimulated by the twang of that bow string,
so he began to tinker with greater and lesser
lengths of string, the musical distance between
two octave notes, creating a wondrous formula
with twelve equal parts, still the basis today
for the music our culture loves, The Chromatic Scale.
On May 13, 1950, a new baby boy was born,
Stevland Hardaway Judkins, sightless form day one,
never coddled by mama, pushed the same ways
as all his sisters and brothers, and by age twelve
he was making his presence known in a happening
little place called Motown, by 13, he recorded Fingertips,
was renamed Little Stevie Wonder playing an instrument
similar to the ones carried in the back pocket of range riders,
wranglers of the prairies, 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, kids hoppin' and boppin',
as this young black man activated a spring-loaded slide,
redirecting the air flow of genius into his Hohner Chromatic,
channeling the dead, bringing this harmonica he'd never seen,
to life.
I specially liked Phytagoras chapter and the last two lines.