Twitter is ideal for haiku.

Think about it. They both encourage brevity – twitter in 140 characters, haiku in 17 syllables. They both eschew capital letters and punctuation. Most importantly, they both describe the present. Twitter asks us, “What are you doing?” Haiku asks us, “What do you see?” 

In doing so, haiku provides an opportunity to transcend the banal status updates that permeate the twittersphere with something sublime. Good haiku describes the visual, but conveys the intangible, hopefully with wit, elegance, or surprise. It gives the poster a reason to contemplate and synthesize before microblogging. It offers the follower ten seconds of Zen in a tech-saturated day.

For example, on Wednesday I could have tweeted, happy tax day! I’m in Texas for a business meeting and we saw a “tea party” downtown. However, I think it was more enlightening for all involved when I tweeted in haiku:

at the Alamo
sweaty tax protestors with signs
wait for Ted Nugent

So, without further ado, I hereby announce the Twitter Haiku Project. I will tweet only in haiku. A few previous efforts are below. Follow me @mattmcadams!