Number Brain

I have myself a Number Brain.

All figures give it glee.

For one example: eight and six

Sans one, is ten and three.

My numbers never let me down,

I count some every day.

Three! Time for tea. Four Chinese seas.

Five marks the month of May.

And if you say, “Say, what’s your fav?”

“Man, all numbas is rad.

But if I gotta choose just one,

Then twelve’s a massive lad.”

Yes twelve, that integer displays

Divisionary force!

By six and four and three and two,

And twelve and one of course.

A twelve’s a rough and ready sort,

‘Tis grand for counting time.

Twelve hour clocks. Twelve Christmas days.

(Twelve’s not so great in rhyme…)

My Number Brain delights in fact.

Statistics are its mates.

For one example, did you know

That the Columbian Plateau

Centers between three states?

And here’s another fact for free

(Plus tax and driver fees):

Of less than four times every day,

As stated in some health survey,

Do average people sneeze.

Uh oh. I’ve fallen off the path,

With each mistaken quatrain hath

From good clean verse, resigned.

Coleridge, he let a few slip by-

“For the sky and the sea, and the sea and sky”-

When he his Rime opined.

Me, I’ve one-eighty about-faced,

With tercets my quatrains replaced.

This whole poem’s undermined.

Oh Number Brain, Dear Number Brain,

Poor Number Brain so fair…

Don’t melancholy-minded turn,

I’ll soon this verse repair.

I’ll salve you with another fact,

A third stat’s just the thing!

Two, one, ahead of six zeros

Live roughly in Beijing.

That did the trick, this Brain is clean,

The neurons shine anew.

Let’s give Brain one last datapoint

Before we bid adieu.

A number means more when its big

So this one’s more than twelve:

The Chinese Communist Party

Continues to forcibly

Harvest the organs

Of its one point eight million

Concentration Camp inmates,

Largely: Uyghurs

And Falun Gong practitioners.

Stop Forced Organ Harvesting.