(1) that a haiku have 17 syllables, arranged in 3 lines containing 5, 7 and 5 syllables
(2) that it be clear
(3) and simple
(4) that it deal concretely with concrete images
(5) that it eschew metaphors

Actually, by an amusing fluke, the poem does contain exactly seventeen syllables of text, if you count the two k's as words. But the syllables aren't in the right places (except for the first five); and if the poem were read aloud, the reader would have to translate the summation symbol and other parts of the poem into words that'd push the syllable-count to about thirty. I would argue, however, that the non-verbal symbols, seen (as they are meant to be, the poem being primarily a printed poem), should--to those able to read them--shrink to a syllable apiece. Meanwhile, the music should merge with the text and thus not contribute to the syllable-count--though the musical araphernalia are very much also present (unsyllablically) as an ambience. Ergo, I claim that the poem is only two or three syllables over 17. Since most aficionados of the form have long since given up insisting on a haiku's having exactly seventeen syllables, that takes care of the first rule.

It's harder to argue that my poem doesn't break the next rule, that a haiku be clear, but I that it is clear--to those who've been exposed to music and mathematics (and why limit a poem's vocabulary to the verbal just because that may be the only vocabulary some aesthcipients will know?). Here's what the poem says: "My mother's portion (of life) consisted of the sum of her moments from birth (at the bottom of the summation symbol) to death (at the top), each of those moments being multiplied (centeredly) by the quantity, lithe-heartedness . . .

All right, maybe that's not so clear. Moreover, the image of my mother's birth's being equal to the sun sung (the circle with a dot in its center being the astronomical symbol for the sun); and her death's being equal to snow's falling unsingably silent, are certainly not clear. Or simple. I would argue that that poem's images are all concrete (true, the astronomical symbol is abstract, but so is the word, "sun"). On the other hand, they are certainly presented abstractly. And the poem teems with metaphors. Maybe I should be asking what haiku rules besides the now-flexible one about its length in syllables--and, possibly, the one about concreteness--does my poem observe!

Well, first of all, it's an attempt to convey something emotionally (and archetypally) deep through an interplay of images from nature, which seems to me the most important haiku rule. At the same time, it strives for the High Serenity I associate with all the best haiku. Finally, it is implicitly strongly metaphorical--and I say that this is the case with all the best haiku, regardless of the oft-iterated injunction against metaphors.

Take Basho's famous pond haiku, which I English as "old pond/ and the sound/ of a frog's splash-in." What would it be if the age of the old pond (which we are directed to) were not implicitly equated with the splash of a frog, and all that opens us up to feel? The implicit metaphoricality of Basho's "autumn evening/ a crow settles on a branch" is even more obvious. It is thus unfair to accuse my poem of being too metaphorical to qualify as a haiku.

Two charges only hold, then: that my poem is insufficiently clear and that it is too complex. The first I've already admitted to. To the second I plead guilty as well, but now claim that the complexity withers to almost nothing if my poem is considered a sort of renga consisting of one haiku about birth, one about death, and one about how a particular woman lived her life. Aside from that, I claim that prohibiting any poetic form from being complex is ridiculous. From that bit of arrogance, I descend to the the Major Dictum I've been leading up to: if we want to save the haiku form from formula-driven moribundity (as in "Mom and Dad's gravestone/ their names half-effaced by streaks/ of still-wet wren-shit") we must pay less attention to the trivial rules too many effete literary legislators have foisted on us and risk clumsiness, confusedness, and absurdity in our quest for the concise expression of final (or even lesser) living understandings.