Jump Out Any Window is my latest chapbook and consists of 20 recent poems. Most have not been previously published. A big thank you to the editors of Bad Acid Laboratory, The Scum Gentry, Seppuku (issue 5) and The Asylum Floor who have previously published some of my work which appear in the chapbook.
Check out the backroom website for more information about their list of poets, bios and sample poems.
Purchase the book here: https://backroompoetry.sumupstore.com/product/jump-out-any-window-george-douglas-anderson
The backroom poetry site in its poets section features my poem 'The Mayor of Little Gary Beach'.
The Mayor Of Little Gary Beach
He waves to me from his bed
in the decrepit Depression era shack
and like a true gentleman
offers me a beer, his only condition
that I take all my empties (& his)
with me upon my return journey
along the flimsy beach path
to the surf lifesavers’ car park.
He is laid up with a knee tendon
injury & points to the fridge.
I open a VB can and he quips,
‘There’s heaps more where
that came from’ & shakes my
hand vigorously. I explain to
him that I’m down for the week
and staying in Mark’s shack.
It rains for most of my stay.
I befriend a bush rat which
usually makes its appearance
scurrying along the small kitchen
bench nearing dusk. There is
running water but no power
so I try to get the words down
in the arvo before dark &
later listen to a micro radio
which plays 60s jazz. On my
last morning at Little Gary,
before leaving, I knock
on the Mayor’s door
& he points to the fridge.
I give him a solid handshake,
down a quick VB & grab
a big black plastic bag
chock-full of empty beer cans
and make my way back to
the car park to catch a lift
back to the busy city.
Little Gary Beach is a small coastal village about 30 kilometres south of Sydney, New South Wales and is only accessed by foot through a narrow beach trail above the tide line.
Most of the dozen or so shacks at Little Gary Beach were built in the 1920s and 1930s with the approval of the local farm owner. The area was formally added to the surrounding Royal National Park in 1954 and the NSW Government has for decades attempted to demolish the shacks for environmental concerns. The ongoing legal battles are complicated and many shacks have survived this day.
In David Hill's Foreward to Ingeborg Van Teeseling’s excellent book SHACK LIFE: The Survival Story of Three Royal National Park Communities, reveals about Little Gary, “It is part of the unwritten rules of the place that whenever you go there, even as a guest, you carry in with you as much as you reasonably can. In addition to lugging food and drink (Era has a strong tradition of enjoying a drink!) there is a need to carry in kerosene for the lamps and the refrigerators and gas tanks for the cooking stoves, although many shacks now increasingly have solar power panels."
What Hill doesn't mention is that what you bring into Little Gary Beach you must return back to the city. I suppose this simple virtue is the essence behind the poem 'Little Gary Beach'.
You can purchase SHACK LIFE here: https://www.amazon.com.au/Shack-Life-survival-national-communities/dp/1742235484
Another poem, in prose form, perhaps worthy of further explanation is 'Alf's Lost Paradise' a last minute inclusion into the chap. What I wanted to do in the poem was to tell a simple story of visiting a friend’s collapsed hippie commune with the purpose of possibly getting his hard earned back.
‘Alf’ had poured a heap of his cash into a section of land into a property in the Kangaroo Valley in the mid 1970s. The deal was dodgy like many at the time. It didn’t secure him any property rights apart from access to a small portion of it. His section, like others on the property, looked amazing, particularly to city dwellers, but it had no connection to electricity, gas or sewerage. Hippies came and went to the Valley until about ten years later they had completely disappeared.
We drove down with Alf in the 1980s to see if we could get his brass back. At the time, I drove a Datsun 1000, a shit of a car, but reliable. We parked the vehicle near the ‘commune’ and dislodged a large rock to place behind the front wheel to prevent it from rolling down the hill. To our surprise there was a red belly black snake coiled there ready to strike.
Alf’s Lost Paradise
I drive the old Holden Ute to visit Alf’s commune, his ‘little piece of paradise’ in a cleared wood
in Kangaroo Valley down the South Coast.
The original hippies are long gone.
Several white ant gorged shells of the once hopeful tenements & rotting caravans now leak
like metallic bile into the local creeks.
Alf points to a mini geo-dome in the next paddock
steeped in thick native Silvergrass. His abode & our lodgings for the long weekend. Eight by eight feet in circumference.
Nearing sunset, we clear out several feral bottle bongs from previous anonymous squatters & roll out
our sleeping bags in the cramped, tepid quarters.
The owner of the property, Boyd, an aspiring surreal artist
lives in the last habitable frame, a tall giraffe of a humpy reached only by a 25 foot ladder with thin dodgy wooden rungs.
From his pad you have a spectacular view of the Valley:
old growth forest of Scribbly Gum, Red Bloodwood & Turpentine, set above a luscious understory of thick sclerophyllous heathland.
We call on Boyd in the early morning & make the steep, precarious climb to his loft. He hands Alf a large glowing spliff.
‘I don’t smoke that shit, no more. Really Boyd, you know why I’m here. Any chance you can refund me my bread, man? Any of the 18 Grand
I contributed to the commune would be greatly appreciated! I only pass through these woods on rare occasions now. I’m dead fucking broke, mate!’
Boyd is calm, reassuring and gently embraces Alf like a son.
‘You know I can’t do that Alf. We made a gentlemen’s
agreement many moons ago. As you know, your money has long
been spent on improvements to the property, not just enhancing my wealth.’
Disappointed, we head back to the geo-dome for the night.
We make a small camp & as we chew on some home-baked gummies, Alf enthusiastically thrums on his bongo some of his groovy
Habanera beat patterns.
Later, we gaze into the sky.
The universe melting. Stars like candles.
Sometime during the night we crash into the dome,
the door ajar and we are exposed to a throng of mosquitos.
Later in the dark, I awake with rats sniffing & gently clawing at my head. I keep the torch on low but gradually the beam fades.
Another poem that I would briefly like to discuss here is ‘Mushroom Carpentry’. The poem stemmed from an anecdote told to me years ago by a friend who was an apprentice carpenter at the time. He once downed some acid during a job and somehow managed to affix two knobs to a door where one should actually exist. The bloke survived ok and is now a very comfortable millionaire many times over. I like the crazy humour and absurdity of the piece.
Mushroom Carpentry
The boss’s instructions to the young
blonde apprentice are straightforward:
‘Install ten sets of standard door knobs
where indicated & if you complete the job by 2
you can fuck off early.’
The tab of acid the rookie drops
after lunchtime seems to come on
much earlier than he had anticipated.
When he closes his eyes-
the world churns in collapsing
walls of logic & colour-
multiple flower heads explode
& then dissolve- in a chaotic,
kaleidoscopic vision.
When the boss returns to the work site
around 2, he is totally pissed off to see
two doorknobs, weirdly attached
to the centre of the orange front door,
where one should functionally exist.
He angrily confronts the bemused apprentice,
‘Mate, you on the fucking magic mushies again?’
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