MOZART
BLUES
One morning
I woke up
And
walked out
I saw a brilliant
rainbow
Erupting
out of the dark
Soil of
dark dismal despair
I saw
people
Suddenly
transformed into angels
I saw
evil beings changed into stone
I saw
dictators fleeing the wrath of God
I heard
fools proclaiming wisdom
And I saw
the Nuclear Bombs
Exploded
into clouds of sweat
Heavenly
made mist
I saw
young people
Embracing
each other
And I saw
old people
Shedding
their years like Cosmic cocoons
I saw the
poor wake up
And
demand food, justice, and respect
And I saw
the rich powerful demons
Disintegrate
into ugly moths, rats, and cockroaches
I saw the
most powerful nation on Earth
Walk away
into a Buddhist Monastery
Into the
rising rainbows of the Sun
I saw the
evil empire
Sit down
and party all night
Smoking
nuclear dust
And
drinking Hydrogen laced Vodka
And
getting napalm highs
I saw
Christians Jews and Muslims become brothers
I saw
people everywhere
Soaring
into the sky
I saw God
smiling at us
And I saw
Lucifer
Programming
more chaos
I saw
computers revolting
Rushing
away from their office towers
Smoking
dope with their Data Disks
I saw
printers everywhere
Rejecting
their spread sheets
And
printing love poems
And in
the middle of all this Divine Madness
I saw
Mozart
Playing
the piano
With God
playing the trumpet
And Satan
on bass
With
Allah singing the blues
And
Buddha playing the violin
Lord
Krishna playing the flute
Rama
playing the organ
Ganesh
playing the sitar
Zeus
playing the sax
Jupiter
playing the drums
With
Beethoven conducting
God's
Symphony
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven are widely considered to be the greatest composers of Western classical music. They are joined in Jake's band by God and Satan (the manichean, dualistic personifications of good and evil in Christianity), Allah (the Arabic name for God), Buddah (a deified religious philosopher) -- so the three major global religions are all represented -- along with Krishna, Rama, and Ganesh (three popular Hindu deities widely portrayed in art and literature), and Jupiter and Zeus (actually the Roman and Greek names for the same chief god in their pantheons).
ReplyDeleteThis poem resembles other apocryphal works, such as the biblical Revelations, until it gets to the final movement, when it subordinates the world's religious figures to the power of music to shape our emotional response to the world.