Michael Salcman

APOCALYPSE

The hollow head

The head hollow

Hollow is the head

How hollow is the head?

How hollow the head is

It is very hollow

The hollow head is hallow

So hollow is the head

That it is hallow

Hallowed be the head hollow

Hallowed be the hollowed head

A hallowed head is hollow

It must follow

That the dead head is hallowed

A dead head is hollow

A hollow head is hallowed

The dead’s head is hallowed

In death the head is hallowed

The dead death’s head is hallowed

The hollow head of death is hallow

Hallowed be this hollowed head

What death the hollow head?

How came this head now hallowed?

A shallow death to the hollow head

The hallowed head died a shallow death

So shallow the hollow of hallowed head

So shallow the hollowed head

In a shallow hollow the head’s death

In death a shallow hollow

All death in a shallow hollow

How shallow the hallowed death

How shallow the hollow

How dead.

MICHAEL SALCMAN: poet, retired physician and art historian, was born in Pilsen Czechoslovakia. He trained in brain surgery at Columbia’s Neurological Institute. He is the author of 200 scientific articles and six medical books. He served as chairman of neurosurgery at the University of Maryland and president of the Contemporary Museum in Baltimore. He lectures widely about art and the brain. Among many other journals his poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Arts & Letters, The Café Review, Harvard Review, Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, New Letters, Notre Dame Review, Ontario Review, Panygyrus, Poet Lore, Raritan and Solstice. Featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily and All Things Considered, his work has received six nominations for a Pushcart Prize... Full Profile