Numbers Just Don't

Numbers Just don’t stick
in my head. Numbers
trip in my head, tumble,
collide, a tangled tango
of 11 and crossed 7s.
They jive but not well
switching positions, shifting
to cough-sobre, the suddenly
self-conscious lines
try to rebutton each other,
blink up with near-confident smiles
in a dishevelled, hastily reassembled,
to presentable state,
but obviously
to everyone else, wrong