From My Head

“I don’t like poetry – but I like this.”
—Marty Donald, Farrago

From My Head was an accidental occurrence, fuelled by a self-publishing workshop at Express Media and a desire to stop reading in public from a bunch of A4 pages.

It was laid out using Microsoft Word 95, if you can believe that. When I had finished making up the booklet I showed it to my father and he proposed to make 200 copies at his work. How could I refuse?

I started hocking From My Head at readings in 1996 for five bucks. Later on the best poems would be collected along with newer work in Not Quite the Man for the Job.

This one is definitely sold out, with no actual chance of a reprint ever. But here’s a couple of poems that originally appeared in From My Head for you to enjoy:

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So I bought the grapes last week
Because you told me to buy grapes last week
And they sat in the bowl on the bench
And they sat in the bowl on the bench
And no-one ate them
And you told me to buy them
Because you’d eat them
So they got old
And grew mould
Until one night
Something tapped me on the shoulder
And it was one of the grapes
It had a big black Dostoevsky beard
And it said
“You wanna open the back door?
‘Cause the guys need to take a piss.”
So I threw the grapes out
And washed the bowl

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Eleven Line Poem.

This line stirs a feeling you hold deep within yourself
This line reminds you of your childhood
This line makes you smile
This line falls just short of the mark, bringing
the tone of the whole poem down slightly
This line is crap
This line contains the word “fuck”
This line sounds like something your mother used to say
This line reveals the author to be well read
This line is also crap
This line is taken from a Phil Collins song
This line has too many unneccessary adjectives
This was originally intended to be a witty rejoinder to
the third line, but it works better as the last line of the poem