Three ominous and melancholic songs about class, gender, and alienation.

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Simple Songs Lurking around the Corner

And if I'm being assaulted
On the top floor 
And I call 911...

You won't get there
You can't climb up stairs
Of meritocracy life is not fair
Just to use the elevator you need a keycard
You gotta pay
So you won't get too far ..

You won't find
Me on time
Buried in decadence 
I am not the child I used to be
Coming from hard working and lucky
Parents who wanted better for me
The "American dream"
Is alienation 
Not the child I used to be
And hotels are only temporary 
Places to stay

Up in room
322
I'm going to pay
For priviledges in which I had no say
Exclusion just keeping out the good working class
In hotels and neighborhoods gated
Not the elitest ass 
Who kills a dream gone faded
A dream with origins traded

You won't find
Me on time
Buried in decadence 
I am not the child I used to be
Coming from hard working and lucky
Parents who wanted better for me
The "American dream"
Is alienation 
And I am not the child I used to be
And hotels are only temporary 
Places to stay

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Hotel Elevator Keycard

I want you I want but I don't really 
I just want you to see
Yet I don't want you to watch me watching
From a distance
My limerence inference
Reading between the lines
'Cuz I want to cross the line

If you touched me I would cry 
If you don't you'll have to die
I can hear you talking to me
When your lips aren't moving
When mine are, I'm only talking
To myself 
Something something about 
My mental health
Well this hiding place
Used to help me live
In this empty space
Though as insanity starts to give
Hallucinating imaginary friends
To keep me company 
Has reached its end

I want you I want but I don't really 
I just want you to see
Yet I don't want you to watch me watching
From a distance
My limerence inference
Reading between the lines
'Cuz I want to cross the line

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Limerence Inference

We don't wear bras on Sundays
Not on our day of worship
Not on our restful sabbath
Making it hard to pray
We don't wear constricting garments 
We are free of the tension 
That lives in our chests
It's our Sunday best

On the holy day
Mother's nourishment isn't profane 
My father isn't afraid to hug me
Older boys they don't touch me 
My same body parts arent more dirty 
If anyone profits from their display
It's their owner
Art and pornography are one in the same

We don't wear bras on Sundays
Not on our day of worship
Not on our restful sabbath
Making it hard to pray
We dont wear constricting garments 
We are free of the tension 
That lives in our chests
It's our Sunday best

Why must I be artificial
To make him protect
And make him respect
Our natural 
Difference?
I know she wears her pjs all day long
And sleeps til noon
As she yells in a yawn 
And worships the moon
While he's watching with the opposite of a swoon
But all I want is a day of worship
All I want is a day of rest
The holy day is also a laundry one
My bra 
Is just in the wash
With the rise of the sun
With the rise of his son
Tomorrow at blood orange dawn
Before the clothes are donned
I will put it on 

On Sunday,someday..

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

We Don't Wear Bras On Sundays

I run out of the house in a floral dress
And attract
Bees that attack
Better cover up in black
Haven't you heard the buzz?
I can't be who I was!

I run out of the house in a floral dress
And attract
Bees that attack
Better cover up in black
Haven't you heard the buzz?
I can't be who I was!

I run out of the house in a floral dress
And attract
Bees that attack
Better cover up in black
Haven't you heard the buzz?
I can't be who I was!

It's over it's over no need to hide
I now wear the pigment
Of yellow bees and butterflies
In my lipstick!

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

The Buzz

Half way between poking a dead bird and staring at a doll in a toy shop’s top shelf
Wonderful disgust
Detached, and awestruck 
I gaze out of body at what I made
I hear the triumphant cry of the animal and the squeak of her legs
Behind me 
And I am at peace.

I hear car crash sounds and commotion burying your words when you open your mouth
I nod along without a doubt
Broken seashells wash up on the shore 
Young women bend down to sort 
The salvageable from the ones to let go
There are some answers to the past that you can't know
I just hear without listening while I float to the coast

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Detached and Awestruck: Coming up in the World

Up on the hill
Growing to a mountain
She said, summoned 
Between the glory of youth and the wisdom of age,
The end of her parade,
Yet not a cage,
But the humble wheel that pushes,
Forward that made:
"I am not dying I am life itself igniting"

Her face wasn't pretty or cute but it was sympathetic
And the point I suppose was moot 
And I believe, I guess for her, that it was true

I Am Not Dying Interlude

Dust bunnies in the back of my head
munch upon word salads 
like autumn leaves 
that wither as I forget 
memories 
of what was truly said 

When I was a kid
who couldn't sleep at night
and my parents' room was locked tight
I'd stare at nothing until nothing became a sight 
the smudges and the shadows were 
my friends and demons on the walls and the door
the smudges were mistakes
the shadows the shade 
of darkness illuminating life 
like the mind responds to boredom and confines
turning mundane accidents into something more on the blank slate
the blackness covers and creates 
animals and people in blob shapes
without any authority to tell me what's fake

Dust bunnies in the back of my head
munch upon word salads 
like autumn leaves 
that wither as I forget 
memories 
of what was truly said

Dust Bunnies Munch On Word Salads

She says "I believe it but I can't sell it"
She communicates though she can't tell it
Well you're still hurt if you can't yell it
And it's still shit if you can't smell it!

The movie's familiar,  I think I've seen it
We believe in equality until it's no longer convenient 
Human life has no inherit value
Everyone has something to prove
Discrimination is only bad if it happens to you
Defensively checking over her shoulder 
So she can get the bag
In a marble office molded by tortured boulders 
Only help others if it can help you brag
Spinning around in a whirl
It's a bitch eat bitch world!
Self important people ople who get high off their own farts
Acting like it's all some kind of deep art

Marble hotels and marble office buildings
Fear a balance might be tilting 
In these death paced museloums 
She goes like a Christian to a colesoum 
Going to be ripped apart by lions
Except for her it's corporate buyins 

I watch the men in suits on the train
And dream of them stomping on my spleen
And reveling in the pain
There is an inherit relationship between
Masochism and materialism
How people get to command
The leather gloves on their pretty hands
The third world slaves, their own work, and the skin the animal gave
Comfort makes you soft
Comfort makes you rot
But not as much as the people who sweat to keep the Comfortable on top

Everything is empty and decadent
Dull beige and overstuffed glitter  beguilment 
But I see the chipped paint in the corner
I see the bodies in the coroner 
What brought us here and our end
The wage slave's self sacrifice is a flag 
False humility flying half mast, her mask
In these unpredictable, artifical winds

Angsty Work Poem

She's hunting, searching, plotting
For a man-shaped god

Scavenging scavenging
The compost heap 
She creeps
Looking through other women's leavings

She's hunting searching plotting
For a man shaped god

She'll rush to find a new father god cloaked
In a kaleidoscope of overwhelming cope 
To pull down a velvet rope
Baptise her in roses and in soap
In a cult 
Of dust and sand
In bird's feather molt
She wants god in a man
Summoned through remnants of passed time 
To make offerings and a shrine
To build the nest and lay some eggs
Shove her breast in his man infant face

Hunting, searching, plotting
For a man-shaped god

After the particles dissipate as I rub my eyes
I can see a new vision clear 
I can see through the lies
I can see it all here
Softly raping my ears
Layers of self pulled forth
When I ask her subconciously and 
Through the tall spotted grass
Of her island 
She whispers her plan
Before she distracts with a drowning splash
Bright patterns flash
And crash to black 
When the science of genetics fails
And futility of heredity makes her flail 

She's hunting searching plotting
For a man shaped god

Detecting detecting
Is he the etching in the shadows
You won't find him, no no no

She's hunting searching plotting
For a man shaped god

To help her complete insurance fraud 
She wants to destroy without receiving fault 
A hitman she can exalt 
Rather be poisoned than kill self, I think she's lost
She wants to be a lightening rod
To die and meet him in the fog
I wish she'd hault (3x)

She's hunting, searching, plotting
Scheming, beaming, dreaming, panties creaming
Still believing

She's Hunting, Searching, Plotting for a Man-Shaped God

Letters in harmony grow to be words
And connect to sentences written and heard
But numbers crammed against each other are still just numbers
Just cold and solitary
Just numbers no community
No unity in unique identity.

Numbers from a distance multiply 
Sickly dots that buzz like flies 
On a static background electrified
As you kill off all the "unworthy" life
Why do so many people have to die ?
Why do so many people have to die?
For your profit margins, quotas, and self fulfilling pattern seeking statistics
Your razzle dazzle numbers swim synchronized 
Feverish in all the nothing and take a dive
Without meaning or a means
Without greater context to believe.

Letters in harmony grow to be words
And connect to sentences written and heard
But numbers crammed against each other are still just numbers
Just cold and solitary
Just numbers no community
No unity in unique identity.

Numbers Don't Make Sentences, They Shouldn't Make Death Ones Either

The child wants to have what's in this box
He wants to bite the hard candy rock
And I say if you're a good boy I'll undo the lock

But time takes a long leisurely walk

The old man asks what's in this box
If it's occupied 
By what he could find
Worthy of 
His precious time
And I say it's empty, just kept as a souvenir shrine 
Yet somehow he's still captivated by
A fascination he can't deny
Or maybe his brain is just fried
'Cuz he keeps asking and asking
And others they grow and change 
While I'm still basking
In where I always was

The Box You Wait For

And I meditate on the symmetry of life
As I stare at my convex reflection on a knife
The distorted face
Of luck and fate
As it's almost time
To cut the birthday cake
For my saturn return
While it and other planets swirl
Above my head
Like I bumped it on the post of my bed
Getting fucked in the rhythm of a riddle rhyme
I eat a jagged slice
I choke it up just right
And shut my butterfly fluttercry guttereyes
To watch bright patterns of hallucinatory lights
That burn winged things and make them die
Wash up and release on the sewer tides
That run from those sloppy globes
Down the pipes
And evaporate to where I don't know.

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Through a Convex Knife

You say the logs in my way are natural
But I say a storm caused them to fall
And from them
I could build a bridge or wall
I could have so many uses
To make the best of your excuses
Let my obstacles backfire
Towards my personal desires

I will carve a totem pole
Into the logs you call natural
Demand you stay in your new low role
I'll start a new order
For you to pay the toll

You scorn the lake the logs fell in
How dare that wet hole make them rot
How dare she exist
Can't she be what she's not?

I will carve a totem pole
Into the logs you call natural
Demand you stay in your new low role
I'll start a new order
For you to pay the toll

You tell me every tree
Holds a story in its rings
It's history 
Yet I say
They're still just circles 
Not progressing anyhow anyway
No inherent value in tradition
It's okay to take a stand 

I will carve a totem pole
Into the logs you call natural
Demand you stay in your new low role
I'll start a new order
For you to pay the toll

Yet it's only a new totem pole
Not a true revolution 
Just petty retribution

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

The Carver

They say (3x)
If you don't know how to make 
Money while you're sleeping
You're gonna work til you die
But lately they say that I
Am different 
Instead it's who I sleep with
Though they don't know my secrets
There's more than meets the eye

They say (3x)
Sleeping alone is scary
Yet more comfortable
Why don't you free your spirit?
Though I will not hear it 
Not that I fear it
I just want to give to someone who gives in return
As long as they have the ability to earn
While I stay with him when life gets rough
Everyone knows that life is tough

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Not Sleeping Alone

I.
When your parents become your grandparents
Who pinch your cheeks and dote
When your older sister becomes your younger one
craving validation
so
Bad
That she acts
Like doesn't even know
You anymore and wants to get within
When it even feels like she wants to wear your skin
Because you're a reminder of what she could have been
When family's love wants to be close yet feels new and foreign
And gorged and starving
When the gestures of overwhelming love
come across as disarming
You only get the love of a child once you prove yourself as an adult 
Don't be fooled belated baby, it's not your fault
And while you know you aren't a kid
You might as well enjoy it.

II.
No gush
No rush
No water breaking flood
I was born in a dry baptism of her last drop of menstrual blood’s 
shadow
My first name was “Last” and middle name was “Hope”
Although she didn't appreciate my middle name 
Until the others were away
And I didn't have to stay
Her substitute friend
I revisit 
The scraps of her uterus
She drills me in 
When lonely and trauma dumping
Shivering, I fashion a nest
Frayed womb like silk rags I cling to my chest
Seaweed and kelp like a futile lifejacket
That turns into a net
Preventing me from falling to the bottom
When I drown in her depths
I don't mind anymore
Now that I'm older 
I relate to her madness more than ever
And in someways, despite how it looks, feel like a helpless child more than ever 
So I'll take the offered solidarity and solace.

III.
I had a dream I was on a train
Speeding forward straight
But when I blinked it became a roller coaster
Looping and zigzagging below and over
I sometimes thought of mother rabbits
That eat their babies so that predators don't
And the weasels that like to steal the rabbits’ homes
While these aren't the perfect metaphors for what I was trying to grasp
What I'm saying is, while sometimes consuming closeness
Enjoy family and home while they last
I guess I guess
What I'm trying to say
Is I can leave the party late since I arrived late.

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Bigger and Smaller than Ever in Ways Both Good and Bad

You kiss a frog that turns into a dog that gives you dead animals
You don't want
Trapped in the grocery store of love
Buying food she won't eat 
Or she'll gorge on while she says
It's not good enough
He'll horde rotting food
She'll horde lots of things
Why won't you take the offering?
The rotten seed...

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Trapped in the Grocery Store

I can smell your strawberry lube
Stuck in your hair like it's cheap perfume 
Watching from across the room
The fragrance looms
Your tits hidden in a jacket
Of black garbagebag-esque plastic
You're so trashy and fantastic 
Your soul
Wanna reach out and grab it
Out of this gutter club
Out of this dirty mud

I'm sorry that you had to go down
On that clown
For another disappointing night
Or maybe he forced you to come 
And you were too rushed 
To wash your hair
I know he doesn't treat you right
And you don't care
You've given up the fight 
Every time you're having sex
You just read a script 
But I can treat you better than him

I can smell your strawberry lube
Stuck in your hair like it's cheap perfume 
Watching from across the room
The fragrance looms
Your tits hidden in a jacket
Of black garbagebag-esque plastic
You're so trashy and fantastic 
Your soul
Wanna reach out and grab it
Out of this gutter club
Out of this dirty mud

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Strawberry Lube Perfume

I want to be 
Only seen 
As porn for your prayers
Not worshiping
No idolatry
Just inspiring
You to higher things 
You're focusing on
A new dawn
Porn for your prayers
Mosaic stain glass layers 
You cut yourself on the sharp
Outline you're fingering
At the Chapel 
After dark
Just some stimulation
An invitation 
As I'm watching you
From a distance 
Like a God
You'll never see
The real me
'Cuz I'm an essence 
You can only drool 
Over my resemblance
In paintings
In sculptures
That hands have 
Toiled over
Like your hand  toils over
Your place under
Can't get over that we're over

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

Porn For Your Prayers

In the still suburban suburbs
There are no animals, only open doors
Beckoning gently at night
With nothing to tempt inside
With peace or death on my mind

Soon I’ll be a woman
They’ll place me in a wooden box
Full of daises and hollyhocks
And push me down a river
That leads to a waterfall with rocks
At the end 
Of all its curves and its bends

In the still suburban suburbs
There are no animals, only open doors
Beckoning gently at night
With nothing to tempt inside
With peace or death on my mind

Soon I’ll be a woman
Laying in the box half awake
Where I’ll notice lots of things on my journey on my way
“I can see the white water is shallow
The black water too
While I can't see it I know it's true
But the grey is so deep
It could be explored forever
So it seems”

Soon I’ll be a woman
Soon I’ll go away
To higher ground
To a quiet place
To a place lower down
And closer to the earth
To loudness and chaos in closed rooms where I’ll question life’s worth
It’s alright it’s okay
It’s just some change
I’ll manage even if it causes temporary pain

She was the casuality of their suffering
I thrive off the pain and death of my siblings
My purpose and golden child polishing
I am a child of death and rebirth equally 
They were all too insecure or manipulated
To do what they truly wanted
My dad tricked into joining the family business of broken promises
As my parents slowly die their fragility reincarnates into me 
The cause that caused their lost dreams
I was never so special I think

In the still suburban suburbs
There are no animals, only open doors
Beckoning gently at night
With nothing to tempt inside
With peace or death on my mind

As you get older, it becomes so clear
You are not as strong
As you think you are
You just struggle with processing
But the dam is finally breaking
So there's nothing that can enter the doors
That door...

Cover art, production, lyrics and singing by: Jessica "Nikki Ceceré" Brown

I'm Becoming a Woman

Mermaids washed up on the ocean
Causing a commotion
Mother nature's blowing chunks
Of coping mechanism hunks

The gentle siren sounds lost to mechanical pollution
Your money making schemes
Your short sighted solutions

Mermaids washed up on the ocean
Causing a commotion
Mother nature's blowing chunks
Of coping mechanism hunks

You blamed her
For your crashing on the rocks
She was minding her business
You slipped on your ego ‘n cock

Mermaids washed up on the ocean
Causing a commotion
Mother nature's blowing chunks
Of coping mechanism hunks

Girls become women when they bleed
First it’s only physically
But the hurt
Under my skirt
Was nothing comparatively
To what was waiting for me
Get your daughter
Prepared for slaughter
The sharks smell blood in the water
People devour hens, cows, and pigs
Much more
Than roosters, bulls, or boars
Don’t forget the body keeps the score
When we exploit the feminine natural world
And the glittering majestic dreams
Of escapist fantasy
Everyone's craving woman meat
To fuel their marching fighting feet
We’re taught to be desirable before we know what it means
Taught we are more obscene
Taught to cover more legally
Unless it's to be sold for business
Bureaucracy 
Tell me who really owns you and me?
They can paint us but we can’t own us
They can sculpt us but bemoan us
When we try to profit from our image it’s whorish vanity
Hating our authenticity 
Consumeritisitc painted performance
Is our definition
Divorced from our bodies
Antiorgasm
Subconscious terrorism

Girlhood
More like hurlhood

Mermaids Washed Up On the Ocean

Simple Songs Lurking around the Corner

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