mellowtone has it: that sweet, sad softness that is musically and lyrically congruent; the bittersweet sound that moves from triumph to defeat to joy and pain in absolute stillness.
Ed Roman isn't relying on classic rock, folk, or pop sounds. Rather, he's creating an intricate kitchen-sink fusion of pop, rock, folk, reggae and country that gives us energetic, spontaneous, even gleeful fun.
The 30 year old cool kids are emptying their children and youth all over the parking lot. Dirty diapers without an owner that once belonged to their kids or maybe themselves, smelling like a hefty child support court story...
“Fucking bunch of idiot liberals take their side, and then the Muslims start hollerin’ that they got rights, like they’s real Americans, like they belong here...”
Lower Leg had downtown: the drugstore, the town’s two restaurants, the old Ferguson Theater, a couple gas stations, one with a convenience store, and a few other businesses, most closed. All of it was old and dying, paint flaking, stone and brick chipped and dull, or already dead, slowly murdered by the Wal-Mart on the northeastern outskirts of town...
if we shimmer, somehow,
above our ivory clouds;
if we are to them
as silvered fish
but it appears they take themselves where
taken their destiny is all that’s behind them on
the road and that child’s voice not even a memory
within an architecture of raw air
(Cy Twombly triptych, an
innocent & pre-
plastique Michael
Jackson concert, a
touched de Chirico).
Whenever I wake from a bad dream, my murderer gives me homework. He’s there waiting. Not at the edge of the bed, as one might assume, with a hand resting calmly on my back, but sitting alone in the dim light of the kitchen.
the sun skims across their faces everyday
razing red-hot and cancerous skin
in time all the stones will turn black
and melt away like Icararuswings.
hips puddled pale on the asphalt
path, where lately space has been
spread a blanket of columbines,
weeds seeded out in puffs hugging
her silence all after, reckoning.
To defend José Lezama Lima is a right
defend him from God and from the hell
of majuscules and luck
stiff-necks and influxes
of the azure
is family style, is by the book.
Is none of my bid'ness.
They have a joy-free smoke,
a homemade drink.
They came from the four corners of the country
from remote places, walled off, cut off
and secluded from civilization,
practically removed from the map,
people of many clans, customs, and cultures
