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Poem is two.

In American English, poem is pronounced as rhyming with "tome"

I could imagine in British English it might be a two-syllable "poh-ehm" though

If you're from part of the US where they don't talk right, sure ;)

It's two in Merriam-Webster. If it were a song it would fly, but for a haiku I'm throwing a flag on the word-play.

Merriam-Webster is the wrong horse if you want to force two syllables given that Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) has several acceptable pronunciations, one syllable (rhyming with “home”) and two syllables (with the second pronounced like “um” or “im” or “em”).

All on page 956 if you'd like to check ;)

https://archive.org/details/merriamwebstersc00merr_6/page/95...

Bedlam..

First down.

Kind of hypocritical on my behalf. I'm more of a descriptivist when it comes to language; I see it as a living breathing creation that is whatever we make of it, as long as the message is reliably traversing to mind to mind, it is correct.

As a native speaker from the US who knows it as two syllables, what region of the US are you referring to? Is this a deep south thing?

Poem is one or two. Artistic license is deployed to enforce use of the singular

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