Steve Kilbey and Patrick Woodcock - 3 from Farhang Book I

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While taking breaks from working on my new manuscript 'Farhang Book 1' I decided to begin writing to artists. I have been listening to Steve Kilbey for over 36 years. His work with The Church, Kilbey Kennedy, numerous solo projects and most recently the brilliant Steve Kilbey and the Winged Heels have all meant the world to me.
The three pieces below are the versions I sent Mr. Kilbey almost 6 months ago and will appear in a slightly different form in my book. The first is for my good friend Peter Shaw. I sadly know how his life ended but know very little about his birth. I tried to bring the two together to celebrate his him. The second is about a trip I took with an elder from Fort Good Hope, NT. While helping him set rabbit snares I couldn't help but think of how I would hang one day. The last piece is about my concern regarding the elder's homes in Fort Good Hope and how an overflowing Mackenzie would destroy their uninsured houses. Sadly, these floods happened last summer. This piece was begun when I was a volunteer with the elders, ten years ago.
I cannot thank Steve enough for what he created.
Credits:
Words: Patrick Woodcock
Written and played by Steve Kilbey
Roger Mason on Piano and Guitarviol
Engineered and mixed by Andrew Beck
*This video was filmed in the locations of where I walked with my favourite dog in Paulatuk After she was killed I went looking for her body. I found her and buried her in the metal tube you see at the end so the ravens would not get her. This journey to find her is the film. For Aqau.
1. The birth and suicide of my Peter Shaw
The purling panorama of the post-Victorian womb,
undone; his birth by blunder, stunned.
Why did he
chew and champ through the nuchal chord,
its running knot and running joke?
Why did he
toss it like a collegiate scarf around his neck?
Why did he
crawl in and out of train windows,
quicker than the stench and stretch of those watching
or the watchmen pissed and parading
through coal smoke at dawn?
II
He rode the harlequinade like a horse, trotted
and trundled like a muddled marionette.
He was born of the wheeled and wheeling,
the crabbing and cocked, until he left
the pulsing panorama of the pediatric tomb
to rock within the chug chug chug of train
and pint; for another’s song, another’s story
another’s moonlight when waterfalling to sleep.
The applausive clicks cascading the air
were passengers bolting their doors,
as your unquiet, quietly stared,
at your shadow now sweeping the floor.
54. Dead rabbits
Heaps of dead rabbits were bundled
like old slippers in a wooden crate;
still wearing their wire scarves
and a new coat of hoarfrost.
Their cloudy eyes lingered behind
icicled prison bar lashes
awaiting sunlight to strike and unstitch,
freeing them to flutter and flirt
with the hordes of snowflake suitors
descending.
When the moon is up, and the twig
and marten say
jump,
vault we must
Up and into a mélange
of twitching animals.
While the skidoos idled, W- showed me
how to make hanging snares with woodchips.
But when his axe reflected our misaligned
headlights into the treetops, I began to think
of my last jump. What demon will pursue
me into the woods? Whose hand will plant
the twig and tie the wire? Will I struggle,
or just gaze up at the stars that blink back
like the eyes of noosed rabbits - opening
and closing, opening then closing.
55. Dolls
Not everything you love will float;
the bundled dolls, their nestled necks,
uncarved throats.
The eddies of eyes,
the whirlpools of limbs, the torsos resting
on riverbeds again.
A wolf and a dog, the heft of their lust,
will jostle with you and the lumber you trust.
Waterlogged dresses, fences and fawns,
like gas cans of liquor will bob and be gone.
Roses on red caps, a child’s warning beacon
will guide the unready,
freed from the deacon.
Your houses are older, swollen and sicker.
Betrayed by the breakup, the spore and the banker.
What were you offered, what form of grace,
for logging their lies through the lines on your face?
(She looks like a paddle to the agent above,
as the helicopters’ ripples disperse all you love.
She sways and careens, face down and weighted
in a dress of light green, the shoes that you hated.)
Come white fish. Come losh. Return to my hook
with a rosary of eyes from the children they took.
Come question the weight of what Oblate’s began;
maker, river, heave back what you can.
#poetry #experimental #Kilbey