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Kool B

  • Kool B's Wordville 1330
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Kool B

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The Perfect Butterfly

She ‘s the perfect butterfly 

You should see her when she takes to the sparkling sky 

Nothing holds her back 

I’ve seen the whole world try 

but candid flowers can not lie 

They die for her rapturous touch 

 

A bush of believing  wind 

. . . pollen  from a spin in flutter 

. . . wings as soft as grandma’s left out butter 

 

I melt as warm as sunsets 

. . . wander through thoughts like a children’s moon 

Maybe a spoon of stainless sugar will bring me back 

like a poem relaxing near a picket fence 

. . . making sense of it all 

 

They die for her rapturous touch 

She’s the perfect butterfly 

You should see her when she takes to the sparkling sky 

Nothing holds her back 

 

Maybe it’s just my swaying imagination 

running away with me 

. . . cleverly telling me something I should already know 

“ Only fools fall in love” 

and  there “The wise dare not go” 

Words can paint a pretty picture 

but heartbreak can melt the snow 

 

Show me the yellow daisies in bloom 

Play me a russet tune that croons of life 

Let powdered memories forget what is soon to come 

 

She’s the perfect butterfly 

Candid flowers will not lie 

You should see her take to the sparkling sky 

Nothing holds her back 

I’ve seen the whole world try 

They die for her rapturous touch

 

11/03/2021

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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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