**Note: I'm not a poet. I hardly ever write poetry, and when I do, it's usually because I've stayed up all night. However, this seemed like a very appropriate poem for Less Wrong. Not sure if it's appropriate as a top-level post. Someone please tell me if not.**
Imagine
The first man
Who held a stick in rough hands
And drew lines on a cold stone wall
Imagine when the others looked
When they said, I see the antelope
I see it.
Later on their children's children
Would build temples, and sing songs
To their many-faced gods.
Stone idols, empty staring eyes
Offerings laid on a cold stone altar
And left to rot.
Yet later still there would be steamships
And trains, and numbers to measure the stars
Small suns ignited in the desert
One man's first step on an airless plain
Now we look backwards
At the ones who came before us
Who lived, and swiftly died.
The first man's flesh is in all of us now
And for his and his children's sake
We imagine a world with no more death
And we see ourselves reflected
In the silicon eyes
Of our final creation
The abrupt interruption of lyrical flow is part of hip-hop. BBut, in exchange for that break, you get a rhyme structure that is far more complex than any usual lyrical poetry can deliver. To use my example, lyrical poetry could never present the LINE RHYME TIMing WHY FINE subLIME rhyming pattern with an offbeat. Instead of rhyming along a ruler, they rhyme along a parabola. I'm not trying to convince you to like hip-hop. I'm trying to point out the aesthetic that is there, that I like. Hip-hop artists do it way better than my silly off-the-cuff example, but I think I got the Fibonacci-vs-Cartesian feel close enough to hear.
I understand, and you do a good job of explaining.
Even your efforts here feel somewhat more coherent than the poem and give a good indication of the aesthetic. I can see how it expresses the kind of cultural theme and attitude of those with whom it is most popular. Without, of course, needing to fin... (read more)