I'm Major Jackson, and this is the slowdown.

On occasion, I question whether or not my desires are my desires, or has my subconscious

merely given into the massive amounts of stimuli of our modern age.

For example, take this almond milk grande cappuccino with one-pump sugar-free vanilla

syrup.

Now that it sits on my desk, have full and cold as a wet day on the beach, I am not convinced

I really wanted an espresso drink, plus over several days I guess I had been seeing them

everywhere, and that made it feel like a natural need.

Frankly, sometimes I am not even sure my positions on political issues are my own.

I feel Uber aware too of how my participation on various social media platforms set me

up as one big canyon of malleable data points.

I find that my moods can easily be switched or manipulated by a single post or trending

topic.

Occasionally, I like to change my profile's location and age, and watch Fox News just

to mess with the algorithms, processes, and classifiers, and to see how it changes my

own reaction.

I'm not the first poet to want to turn all of this on its head.

A group of experimental poets in the late 20th century called the language poets questioned

whether or not even daily language could be trusted, whether it adequately conveyed

any sense of authentic experience or feelings, because regular language itself had been

co-opted by advertising and the interest of selling us goods.

And today, of course, our phones, computers, and other screens keep the goods coming 24

...