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Kool B

  • Kool B's Wordville 1330
  • About
  • Music
    • Kool B In Voice
  • Shows
  • Photos
  • Store
  • Contact
  • Videos
    • Videos
    • Videos

Kool B

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Jul 15 2021

No Need to let the Rain In

 

I say it's sunny weather. 

You say it's cold outside. 

I say the water is fine. 

You say the deep blue has lost its shine. 

 

Spin a nickel like a bottle 

watch it turn. 

Light a candle in the dark… 

…

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Jul 6 2021

Come Away With Me

Come away with me 

high above any nervous weather 

and sound of city thunder 

where heaven doesn’t fade from the uncertain sky 

 

I’m waiting with my favorite suit on 

the one with love poems in every drifting pocket 

…

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Jun 27 2021

A Temple of Familiars: A Mini-Chat With Kool B.

 

The poem is available at every moment; open to the active gaze, resting in the sounds that vibrate the focused ear, awaiting with excitement as one touches or tastes upon the physical elements that are at hand. Even smells reveal…

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Jun 16 2021

A Plate Goes Empty

A copper spoon 

that would have been polished silver 

slips from a mouth as wide as a watermelon smile 

revealing the imagination of a negro child 

that invents in pencil, pen and crayon black 

like a score from Porgy and…

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May 21 2021

In a Moment Near You 

My wires keep a rapid  pace 

They separate your face from a crowded space 

A looking mirror breaks 

as salacious sounds escape

 

My heart awakes in a moment near you 

. . .  holding a Cinderella shoe 

yet the festive…

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May 19 2021

Fish and Dragonflies

A black-top, farm-to-market, road window breeze. 

An old friend, sunrise, eases through the objecting screen.

Dawn beams softly off her morning eyes. 

Dew  sleeping, on her lazy yard, 

still cool from twilight, 

wet under a set of bare feet,

bare…

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May 5 2021

Brownie is a Hold of Breath

 

Brownie is a hold of breath 

So beautiful in drift 

ripping stationary 

Elegance permits her temper 

a swing jazz tempo in bop 

One had to really listen 

 

She skipped punctuations, vowel sounds, and 

Inflated onomatopoeias 

 

Like the drummer splashing his…

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May 5 2021

Unnoticed

A poem unnoticed 

is as a colored child 

sleeping in the dead of night, 

awakened by polished dreams of terror 

and shadow’s light, 

a dim despair 

discarded to the emptiness of time. 

 

There, it isn’t provocative, 

weighed down and drowned…

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May 2 2021

I Shall Rise

                                                         

From copious ash of grave misfortune 

I shall rise again and again 

Despite the deceitful hearts of men 

my candid nerves shall not be lost 

nor set to waver by their lurid contempt 

When jealousy triumphs 

and her indifference scorns 

…

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Apr 26 2021

There is No One Like You

There's no one 

like you 

I've searched every single page 

for two 

Imagined myself with a crayon 

neon blue 

A shade so perfect 

 it rivaled the moon 

A play on looks in your glance 

A quick book full of speechless…

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Apr 26 2021

Love Jones

He was a lit wick 

 at each end, 

... lost a few screws each time the wind blew. 

... wore a steel-toe military combat boot 

 on his wrong foot! 

... said it was agent orange ... 

 water torture ... 

 Vietnam…

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Apr 26 2021

Club Lights Dim

                                       

Club lights dim 

People in the back gradually disappear 

momentarily 

in the trim 

a flood of red, grim and sinister, rays saturate the stage 

Ruby shoes 

Crimson Tuesday 

scarlet sweaters 

and 

a 

Marxist sound-man adjusting volumes and distortions 

Welcome 

as 

…

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For Alvin LeBlanc, a.k.a. Kool B, a veteran of poetry slams going back to 1990, the South is nothing less than “a literary haven,” with Houston in particular “primed” for poetry. “People in the South talk,” says the 54-year-old LeBlanc, who grew up in Lafayette, La., and came to Houston to study sociology at Texas Southern State University. “They see you down the street, and they want to say something. Southern people are also used to listening to orators, preachers. From all of that, poetry has an ear.” 

LeBlanc, an instructor at the Adult Reading Center, brings his poetry to the people as producer of the online show Wordville and a member of the DJ collective Rebel Crew. In performance, LeBlanc recites his poetry in a way that is fluid, yet sounds unrehearsed, as if the words were being pulled out of thin air. In a performance at the Jazz Church of Houston, with his visor wrapped around his long, braided hair, the bespectacled LeBlanc moves gracefully as he speaks, illustrating each line with slow, simple gestures, like a Tai Chi master talking jazz: A village of windblown desperados in pursuit of a gold train loaded down with precious metals, pressed into bullions that grow like sunset, Texas to California dreamin’… It was the sound of black thunder and gallop that made the canyons quake. Let’s make no mistake about it: There’s no honor among thieves and siege is how the west was won. 

Though poetry has always been a tool for political protest, LeBlanc believes the art often reveals more commonalities than differences. “It brings the races together,” says LeBlanc. “Coming from rural Louisiana, where you would get chased home if you didn’t stay on your side of the city, poetry has shown me that people can work together, that people do have the same heartbreaks and the same anger. Poetry is where you can hear the humanness in people.”

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