Son of a mother f*ck.

Maybe if you kinda mumble the “this” and really stress the “poem” it kinda sounds like 5, because the first one is only half there?

if you read "poem" as "pohm" it kind of becomes 5 syllables

If I have to ditch proper grammar to complete a faulty haiku, then it's not worth it.

Is poem 2 sylibles? Sylible counter counts it as 1, but most text book sources will tell us it is 2. Specific to the haiku format- pronunciation is key as the scansion of a poem depends on pronunciation. If you pronounce “poem” as one sylible then it works. The key in writing it is to write unambiguously so the reader reads it as one sylible. In poetry it’s long been a tradition to mangle words and cheat pronunciation for emphasis. Ne’er instead of never for instance- or o’er instead of over. Learnt is an example of a common word created form the need to stress pronunciation in poetry as learned can be read as “well educated” vs. “to acquire new knowledge.” Chaucer would often substitute the German “ch” sound for either English “gh” and so on, he and Shakespeare’s work both suffered because later readers didn’t grasp period pronunciation and so missed brilliant moments. In music we hear this done often- words made up or altered to better fit a verse.