Scalloped Steps from Future Deserts by Hourloupe

A thousand goodbyes in your incendiary light

The priest with his back to us
Turns his head for the shot
As an arm off-camera hands him a robe

He exits into ordinary daylight without putting it on

On lash-like rotors an amoeba rolls up

It seems to bounce on an undulating strand of air
It hovers like a cursor

A thousand goodbyes in your incendiary light
The priest says, feeling his skin burn

Across the patio at the edge of the pool
Sits Jesus. A reclining thief with his head
In Jesus’s lap and dangling one leg in magma
His hair stroked, gazes up into immaculate blue

The amoeba cycles through shades
Each more pyrogenic that the last

A mini-goodbye in you, he says

A cough at my shoulder: it’s the priest
I sidle over making room in the pew

Across his naked body ovals of pilot lights anchored
Not in time to his movements

He stands, they lift; he sits, they settle

On the altar are synchronized gestures

Table umbrellas blossom in the sun
Folds in the baptist’s white tunic undone
As he hurries down the scalloped steps

It fans out in a ring around his head
And he rushes into the water and sinks

A thousand goodbyes he says
As by the temples he pulls you under

• Alternative
• Experimental
• Poetry
• avant garde
• experimental rock