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Kool B

  • Kool B's Wordville 1330
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Kool B

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Fabiola's Pain

Fabiola burned every blue sweater 

thinking it would erase the fabricated pain 

that was her gift to wear 

woven plastic twisting into drunken flames 

folded paper curled and crinkled 

Her sunken spirit wrinkled 

in yellowed blush and then subsequently black 

Ashes into ashes 

Dust into dust 

We all fall down 

look what she had found searching 

Wet lipstick on his Khaki jacket, 

pucker prints, 

orange in her scarlet apartment, 

pacing the hardwood floors 

She turned pink when he knocked 

She opened the door he'd walked through countless times, 

 laughed in a long moment of insanity, 

rambled a Creole slur in contempt,  

freckled-faced

burned by match sticks 

She left a hole in his story with her weapon 

It lied motionless without grief,  

ghostly and insipid 

Her last kiss had no regret 

Fabiola burned every blue sweater 

thinking it would erase the fabricated pain 

that was her gift to wear

09/27/2021

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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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