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Kool B

  • Kool B's Wordville 1330
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Kool B

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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 symbols in flirt of rhythm 

she comes back to her senses 

The bridge returns in syncopation 

Brownie holds her breath 

so beautiful in drift 

She performs in a stream of window light 

Downtown never sleeps 

 

Her mind is restless 

Sips of water keep her voice from cracking 

and showing the melancholy of torn paper 

 

One had to really listen 

Elegance permitted her temper 

Brownie is a hold of breath

05/05/2021

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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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