Adios Amigo

 So I finally left Twitter (never X) after ten years. It was by far my favorite SocMed app. By far. I loved the communities I found there and the ability to get fast and accurate news and info from all around the world and never wanted to leave. But once Elon bought it the downward trajectory took its toll. Almost all of the changes he made made it a worse place to be. As others left the size of my favorite communities shrank, once he changed the Block function there was a mass exodus that couldn’t be recovered from. Black Twitter & Haiku Twitter basically collapsed and Haiku Twitter seemed to be migrating to BlueSky, so I followed. I kept my Twitter account for a few weeks, but once I saw that Bluesky had its own nascent version of Black Twitter and had robust moderation capabilities that was enough. I deactivated my Twitter account after downloading all my data. I had a good haiku day yesterday and here are a few I really liked:

AIDS Quilt

the search for my father

foiled again

peony snow

I change my mind about

false eyelashes

pine needles

another day avoiding

my father’s track marks

before the brass band

the slightly metallic taste

of hooves on asphalt

garbagemen 

along the predawn avenue

the gray aroma of rain

group chat

three sparrows bicker

over bird feed

November rain 

a woman’s eyes glisten

in the bus shelter

ripple of thunder

the eyes of the barn owl narrow

and widen

one hawk

circling a chalk line of clouds

call it Picasso

in the distance

the bison before

the withered grass 

rising above

my buck-toothed youth

Beaver moon

November morning

our flowerbed blooms 

with peony snow

Starry night

learning how “lights off”

rhymes with Van Gogh

September breeze

not the name of the butterfly

or the bee

Rafah at dawn

only one bullet hole

in the doll’s body

February night

I fish for Pisces

in her freckles