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Kool B

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Kool B

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The Wild Side


She was upside down 

like a misused postage stamp 

stuck to a life she couldn’t believe 

I was breathing inside out 

by a firehouse 

trapped by an page too hard to read 

 

With moonlight eyes 

she said hello 

and walked, unhurried, across the sky 

The night was young 

The sun’s asleep 

I could not say goodbye 

 

Happy was a smoky place 

where men lost their shirts 

Women dance all night long 

just to lose their skirts 

 

I said, “Baby, let’s take a walk on the wild side 

. . . I can walk under ladders 

. . . don’t need no bracelet 

. . . no four-leaf clover 

. . . just as long as you are here with me.” 

 

That was then 

This is now 

Somehow we found our peace 

The joker laughed 

. . . played his cards 

and waited on the thief 

 

We showed our hand 

The dealer panned 

and swallowed in disbelief 

I felt the wind from his grin 

His teeth flashed paper-thin 

 

As the band played on 

. . . a simple song 

Lucky headed for the door 

She took my hand without a plan 

and finished her last pour 

 

She said, “Baby, let’s take a walk on the wild side . . . 

I can walk under ladders 

. . . don’t need no bracelet 

. . . no four-leaf clover 

. . . just as long as you are here with me.

08/31/2021

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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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