Obelus

Which century and what mushroom cloud?  How many gifts under the tree?  Which natives shall survive the tragedy?  How many hidden documents and how many misspellings in the official words?  Did both eyes close?  How do you know the worshipping crowd understands?  Which animal appears to be blessed?  Was the creature included in the new text?  Where did the miracles of history go?  Where was the hungry man when the virus played its piano and everyone drew closer to the contagious music?  Why was the name carved on the door the wrong one and who discovered this error that sent armies at each other?  What oceans, which rivers, and how many ways of drowning?  Who does the truth teach when there is no one there?  Why is the stranger holding his hat in his hands? 

The Figures

The figure in black lives in the brain stem where impulse burns and it never thinks about the red figure that hides inside the left wrist to create mute hand signals, though a blue figure pumps blood each time the body dreams it is being influenced by old voices in the neighborhood, new seconds of life splashing across the kept mind that devours the blue and stops wars. 

The green figure swims ahead of the sleeping boys, its smooth veins leaving great ropes and vines hanging on the roof of their mouths, eroding these thoughts until the lone orange climbs out of the throat to sing a low tune that draws a brown figure to stop digging into the larger heart, because the purple shape has flown into the stomach to embrace the yellow figure that signals it is safe to hallucinate, until the bodies regain their health and are able to sit up and scream.