We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

CC​:​PP Episode IV

by CC:PP

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Purchasable with gift card

     

1.
Cantata of the Red Rock Shadow 1. the halo around incandescence whites out my eyes. Background sounds lull into dull white noise. Images fragment, sounds of trains dopple through planes, the geometric barriers of architecture. Negative space the only true space. The page bears fruit. Outside the mesquite thrashes the air, unhappy again that it is spring here. In spring the wind gods vanquish all life, succulence gone to wind and dust, a cantata created from fragmentation, the apocalyptic present, the smell of lilac from a neighbor’s yard. A noose dangling like a naked light bulb. I am thinking nothing not contained in the halo of a hanging light bulb, naked in the night. Nothing. Always nothing. 2. Waiting for the knock at the door. Twin lovers never the twain shall meet. The beast with two backs broken. Boys locked in closets of baseball bats. The fear of rats. An infant howling for its mother’s drugs. Take this. Eat. Bread my body. Wine my blood. Easter season brings conflagrations close to home. She stumbles beneath the weight of it. her cross to bear. Fire scourges west Texas. What phoenix can we pray to rise up? Low in the grave he lay. our savior. Waiting the coming day. Our lord. Her cross to bear. Her life to lose. Her grasp on life loose. Breath turned brown. Death’s earthy ground. 3. Sound of water running. Telephone ringing. Rock of ages cleft for me singing. He is dead and we are left dying. Sepulchral voices accuse of lying. The sound of water over rock. Paper over rock. Scissors rend paper. Rock breaks scissors. Superfluous options. A liar’s waiver, voice haunting. Spiritis evaporate to dust. trains thunder through the barrio. The sound of motion. Steel on steel. Hurry before the spirits steal what’s left of sanity. Peal after clamorous peal. Bells ring warnings. Effulgence pouring. Someone’s at the door— out the door running. 4. The murmur of women praying. Drunken lilies nod their heads like sages. Irish poets sing in French. Smell the scent of angels falling. Bells clamor above death’s stench. Sparrows huddle, not the least of these. Desertscape desiccated and austere. Heaven the sound of water running over rocks somewhere hidden. Somewhere out there a choir of angels beat boys with baseball bats. Adesti Fidelis. 5. Four flaming drays running away. Everywhere the smell of excrement and fire. The life as sacrament. The poem as testament.
2.
Another Twilight Twilight is my favorite time to be walking. I'm walking. Right now. Just walking. Walking and typing into a phone in Fort Mason park. Heading home to my husband, my kitchen, the evening meal that awaits my creation.... Conifers line one portion of the footpath, their seed-bearing cones hanging heavy as the clouds in this dusk. Waiting for release. I wonder if trees have memory in their seed pods, if they know they are displaced like me. We are not of here. This same park holds palm trees on the other side of path. They too reside here in incongruity. I wonder if they dream of heat and mist... of mangroves and skies that scald their frilly little fronds. Their roots longing for the tropical sun. Or is what we think of as 'roots' really a 'seed'. The seed’s job is done, but our roots continue to grow and feed wherever our eyes meet the horizon. Still, I wish there was a place that I belonged… a ground my roots long to thicken in... But I'm a dandelion, a weed, pushing my way through concrete beds, to the nothing - carried away by the whim of the wind… There is an interesting American Indian saying about the wind, and why they don't wish to move from where they were born... The American Indians say "the wind won't know me." And some people believe that when our bodies die, our souls must go back to the very place we were born in order to transition to whatever is next. I know the feeling they have. Sometimes I dream of the Beatles song..."Once there was a way to get back homeward...once there was a way to get back home..." and am forlorn over wonderment at where my "home" is. I've learned this, though: Home is where the heart is. Really. it is. Now finding that heart, well... that's another thing.
3.
In Vino Veritas My head is on his lap. A thousand fumes swirl purple, possibility dances around the room. The air is distilled - raining ruby droplets, soft as mist. His fingers try to free the unruly tangle of my jungle warfare hair, but pull back in retreat as they feel the resistance. An arm appears from nowhere, tugs my body, scooping me in tighter. I lift my head. My neck cranes, stretching to stare up into his mirror eyes. They're glazed with my reflection. I hear a simple song. The lyrics cry, they say my happiness is his ambition. "That's all I want", he murmurs. He slurs this only a little.
4.
The Nursery Room Blues resist Resist R E S I S T deny Deny D E N Y Don't look! Don't touch! Don't tell! Stop ASKING... why Why W-H-Y? Bless me, Father For I have sinned But the sin was in the Lies... The Lies were in the cat's cradle so deftly woven in lollipop guise Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop When the wind blows the cradle will rock... STOP ROCKING THAT CRADLE!!! When the bough breaks the cradle will... with tangled stringy messiness take that inevitable fall... Then Ashes Ashes And we all fall down... Down... Down... the rabbit hole we go... When we'll hit rock bottom? Fuck, if I know! Hey, come on Jack... Be nimble. Come on, Jill Be quick. Or you may get burned by that candlestick! Hell's fire... Lord, I am not worthy to receive thee... But only say the word and I shall be healed... Heel, Spot, heel Stop spinning that wheel!!! Little Jack Horner may never get out of that corner while Miss Muffet on her bigass tuffet eats her curds & whey Cuz Russian Roulette's NOT a game built by Nintendo, So... Ok, Peter, Peter Pumpkin eater you had a wife but couldn't keep her Sure, stick the bitch in that pumpkin shell and there you'll keep her in marital hell Tis she spontaneously combusts But... HEY!!! No worries, 'Cause, of course... All the king's horses & all the king's men Can pick up those pieces and put them back together again No? Oh... then maybe some other time... Looks like Love is just Another Nursery rhyme...
5.
Didn't Cha Know? They say 
the clothes make the man 
but I disagree 
Show me the glide 
in his stride 
and I'll tell you
 Who he could be I've never seen your gait
 yet, I know you stand arrow straight
 casting long shadows continents wide 
I bet an exploration through your countryside
 would give me the sweetest ride
 along the confluence of your river's swells 
into your Mississippi mud trails 
I long to take a torrential dive When I walk 
my hips sway to the beat of my heart
 swinging to a primitive rhythm 
strong and steady 
like the pendulum of a clock Tic toc 
Tic toc I pound the ground
 and command my space. 
I feel the core of the earth 
that ore smelts into my pores. As I transpire, I respire elemental fumes, 
The planet's mantle becomes my throne 
its submission elevates me to places unknown Now is my season 
The world is mine 
I am its reason 
And it is my rhyme... But I do not weight myself down with anchors Nor ensnare the rare fish with word-bated hooks 
I leave that to the erudite and the learned 
I did not earn the bites 
Of the polished apple I eat 
From the wan yellowing pages
 Of dust-ridden books My knowledge is very limited
 That's true 
It ends with me 
And begins again with you But every education has its price 
And such a heavenly body 
Can make a willing study of any vice My winnow window has 
No need to hull the seed,
 It will eat up every bit of your wisdom
 with gleeful greed What you call your rusty water pan drips 
On my lips 
And I lap up every sip 
of its milk and honey Your alley cat Kerouac 
 Tickles my whiskers
 Making me purr
 Yes, I love 
The way you stroke my fur Paste me with your flypaper glue Those sticky icky bits of you 
ignite my wings
 But I'll never burn free 
I soar high in the sky every night 
Carrying the essence of you with me Like the white smoke of papal hope
 Together we shall rise 
anointed in the new Tearing down the boundaries 
of the real
 making the miracles 
of the ancient's promises
 come true So Buon giorno, my favorite 
Stradivarius fiddler crab. 
Yep, I am here like the mad wind Trying to find the bind to lure you 
from your sandy burrow 
til you wave that big violin claw in the air
 and shout "Hell to the yeah!". Maybe I should make like the tide and hide 
so that you feel the coast is clear 
to come out here 
flip your liquid golden lid
 and feast on my fruits of le mar
 with your fiddler on the roof sand dune glee.
 Yessiree... 
I do miss your bliss so very very muchly... Guess I'll just leave you a shallow saucer
 of moon milk out at night
 with a flicker of candle for your alley cat-eye to sight And keep my heartlight shining bright 
til you phone home, ET... Maybe I'll recede to give you the quiet 
you sometimes seem to need... But I know how hard you breathe 
the stench of my sex is on you 
all the relief that you seek 
is the buried deep 
in the treasure that lies 
between the fertile valley of my thighs Ubermensch, I need an infusion of blood For all this time I have patiently stood Waiting
 Negating
 The other...
 But no more! I need succor 
I wish to drink deep of your Nile 
to be soothed by the groove of your ooze
 but sans the ruse
 which the clever Ra used 
to slake the savage thirst
 of a rabid Sekhmet
 Oh no... 
THAT
 Will never do...
 not for this lion queen! This connoisseur cannot be fooled There is only one taste 
I want to savor the flavor of
 and that, my Zooma Zoom Zoom
 of the Big Badaboom 
pools in the cry of the "SPOON!" 
that Ticks within the tattletale heart
 of you Eclipse me
 Eclipse me My man on the moon.
6.
Lady Liberty’s Face I beg alms from the rare passers by
 Here at my little corner of the universe The one I painted myself into 
With gradients of gray charcoal 
And unsteady fingers, constantly erasing
 or smearing the blurry lines between The reality and the fantasy 
The Agony and the Ecstasy
 The You and the me. It's never a pretty picture. My bowl is still empty, too 
It's got a drain in it that can't be 
stopped up, or so it seems... 
Every bit of love freefalls into its abyss 
I told you that one day you would tire 
of this explosive suitcase bomb kiss 
that I proffered. My allure has
 a built-in obsolescence 
A must-destruct code 
in its concupiscence. Just call me Pris. Like a Tyrell Corporation 
mendicant replicant... 
I want more life, fucker... 
But all my crying is in vain 
It's just tears in the rain. Wish I lived in an 
Ansel Adams photograph 
Instead of floating along 
this megapixel Asimovian Babylon. 
His blacks are not shadowy
 And his whites don't blind He snapped shots of a world
 Tinged in a Patron silver 
tequila spun light So unlike 
The cyber hyperspace 
I inhabit now... I'm lost
 Got caught 
Inside
 The cool blue blight Its 
Wavy gravy particles 
made to mesmerize. How did I let this happen?
 This viral dance with ribbons of words
 Tied into sailor knots shot Out of a Howitzer
 with errant arrows
 That boomerang back 
to wound my Eros. All those streamers of
 meaningless encounters with you
 Gaily waving in a
 festive doomsday wind
 Tied to a motorcade cruising
 at Sunday afternoon ease. Sulu at the helm... Oblivious to the danger 
in the parade
 Never seeing the Oswald
 crosshairs on the grassy knoll. Our smiles wrapped 
in bright birthday bows 
and honeycombed in hope...
 As we dive-bombed the future. Those playtimes? 
Where did they all go?
 The sand pails and the apple trees?
 The rainbows and the sweet dollies? Guess they all eloped 
with the Easter Bunny
 Or were kidnapped by the Sandman
 To sow dreams for other deluded folks
 With self-forged yokes
 that choke and sputter
 In a chitty chitty shitty shitty
 bang bang gutter... Gutter 
{{{{Shudder}}}}
 Utter 
 the
 Gutteral
 Language La Lingua Franca...
 Che stancha! I'm sick of words. 
Sick of people who wield them 
like the Evil Queen's mirror, too. "Mirror Mirror on the wall
 who's the cleverest of them all? " Making obvious observations
 seem like grand epiphanies.
 Weaving prayer rugs from the grazing
 of their jelly belly lint. Such little bundles of wriggling Id, 
Colicky and cranky crying out constantly
 Their chronic need to show their profundity,
 Spewing geysers of gullibility. Me, included...
 Blah blah blah... We think, therefore we are.
 We are, therefore we think.
 And into the abyss we sink.
 Stinking like 1000 year old eggs
 Chicken, egg.
 Egg, chicken.
 We don't care as long
 as it's finger-licking Good Just as we should... We are the gift that keeps giving 
Just ask the universe 
Who's on first?
 No!
 Who's on second!
 I thought you said Who was on first? 
I dunno... 
Third base! It's all a second rate
 Machiavellian vaudevillian show.
 Screw it, spew it, then chew it...
 We pedal on the Krebs cycle, yo
 Til we cannibalize ourselves
 The bastard children of Cronus, after all. Let's make a Gulag Archipelago Incanto 
And sing old sea chanteys 
with the ghosts of the oppressed.
 Nobody realizes that they are so blessed
 until you strip them and whip them... "The secret of joy is the mastery of pain."
 Said the goddess Anais Nin...
 Damn such self-realization It's probably considered a sin...
7.
8.
Ojáncana 02:37
Ojáncana It is the eye of the beast in a storm of red that throttles blood from stone. The storm has arms that wrap around unsuspecting men - like you. Her perfume is damnation, but you swallow the scent like honey because it pours over your tongue and enguilds you, making you sing her name out to the stars. The smell of grilled meat is strong as her thighs tighten their grip. You feel your breath shorten to gasps. The moon turns a blind eye and douses the night - the ground is wet with anticipation. The fall is soft, the reckoning is hard, but her embrace is stronger than time and you never feel the sting as she tears through your belly. You are too busy feasting at the altar of your own sacrifice.
9.
Comé Mierda 09:31
Comé Mierda “You’ve got pineapple picking hands”, he told me. I was 10. It was summer. We were in Dona Juanita’s apartment. 421 East 102nd St #1-C was my sanctuary even though it was only just across the hall from where the bad things were happening. There was no bell tower
, no hunchback, and I wasn't a gypsy (although I loved the name Esmeralda and used to don scarves & rings for Halloween before I gave that sort of thing up a couple of Octobers before), but Dona Juanita's door was always unlocked, and her apartment was clean and welcoming. I looked at my little hands, at my short square palms, at all the many lines that were etched across them. I hated them. I wanted soft smooth palms with long tapered fingers like John’s. John had the hands of someone born to play Schubert piano concertos. My hands looked like the road map to a country in upheaval, like something concocted by a mad cartographer drunk on mavi and rum. When John shared his impression of my hands, I imagined the Puerto Rico 
I had never lived in. I saw endless fields of pineapple, prickly and golden,
oozing their juicy fruitfulness, ready to be snatched out of existence by
hands expressly designed for that purpose. Hands that John remarked
 about so disdainfully. My hands turned into scythes in my little 
kaleidoscope mind. I sucked on the sour jelly of a quenepa fresh off its 
dead vine as I considered the implication of my pineapple picking hands. Of course, John’s name was really Juan - until he changed it. He was named after his mother, but declined the honor as soon as learned the difference between a boy named Juan and a man named John from the backwoods of East Harlem. Had he been a man named Juan from Barcelona, he might have reconsidered the name change. Then he would have been a rare form of esoterica, not just another ghetto dweller ashamed of his heritage. Despite John's cattiness, I enjoyed his company, much as I enjoyed the company of all adults at that age. I liked their chatter. I found conversation with other ten year olds tiresome. Adults lived rich complicated lives, yet all seemed so incapable of dealing with the issues they grappled. They amused me. John had the glamour of being 6 feet tall, strongly built, 25 years old, singing Puccini operas in a rich baritone, painting mythical figures with a primitive palette in thick geometric dashes and swirls, collecting marsupials, snakes and other forms of reptilian exotica. I smile now as I recall the menagerie. Using Dona Juanita’s bathroom was like entering the petting zoo at Central Park. Frogs and turtles and lizards all co-existed peaceably and swam around in Dona Juanita's bathtub. John's rabbit and ferret were kept in cages that were not much smaller than John's bedroom. John took this occasion of his inspection of my palms to remind me that I would never amount to anything, that nothing would become of my life, no matter how many grades I was skipped in school (as I had been twice in two years), but I suspected he spent most of that night and many other ones trying to forget all the bows and dresses his mother, Dona Juanita, made him wear the first 10 years of his life, so I forgave him instantly. On days when the mercury on the thermometer is high, and (for whatever reason) my confidence seems to be evaporating at the rate of every bead of my sweat, I look at my hands and hear John's words. Still
10.
The Rock 04:16
The Rock The pain was swallowed. Ossification had been slow but steady. Flesh churned to stone. Stone ground to sand. Sand burned to glass. Can you see through this vitrine window? This is not a body. It's a terrarium. Fed by a crimson lake of carmine. Its salts cloud my vision and flood my dreams. I'm crawling with insects. Go on, tap my screen. But don't leave your fingerprints smudged on me. It might identify you, us and what we are, or worse - what we aren't. I'm tired of living in this bell jar. I'm breaking the glass. This is an emergency.
11.
Put The Blame On Mame He comes to me 
his hot breath masked
 by the icepack he straps 
to his head to keep cool Both hands fall off 
the clock & all the 
hours deteriorate into
 a messy pile of random debris I feel threatened by 
the pulse of dead seconds 
trying to scale the glass the music they played was 
once so pretty but now 
every note sounds out death
12.
Throw The Dice I was walking along the beach thinking of Heisenberg's Principle, the idea of our atoms bombarding and affecting everything around us, about the effect the wind that was blowing on me could have as all the breath it carried from so many lives, past & present, blended with mine. I was wondering, too, what more than its gritty grains the sand gave up to me, what it lost or gained as I dug my heels in, commingling the impressions, desires from every person that walked upon it before I did, wondering if we were always exchanging raw data - every second of our lives... wondering if I could feel someone else's kiss in the wind... and was mortified. I don't want to steal anyone's kisses... Wondering about reliquary halls, and the essence of what we are everchanging and if we were always recombining with the world around us, are we who we think we are? Or is this constant state of flux a negation of our being? I was thinking of love and the cosmos... I guess I always am. Always indulging a nation of images 
I imagine I hear the moans of captive tides 
being discarded by the wind 
That same fickle wind
 that blows through my hair as the setting sun
lights the copper-fire 
burning within each strand of barbed wire that
 assaults my scalp,
 and in this dimming light 
I begin to wonder and reflect on... Why? Why each frazzled tendril of mine fights 
with a bloodlust, trying to secure its place 
on my otherwise carefree head... Coiled in constriction
 with a tenacity that I (futilely) wish to believe 
belies my nature - - But I know what I am. Don't I? These follicles of mine are contortionists, 
rebellious, desperate wantons 
holding their fierceness with 
a tension never sprung. Maybe my hair's prickly nature really expresses 
my repressed desires, my husband
 says they are always unruly and tangled
 because they love each other so much that can't bear laying calmly apart. It's a sweet thought, in a perverse way. Is it my unsung cries of frustration
 that tousle them in these moments of 
mid-January leaf-breezing? 
The sky's combing teeth grooming me... but for what? Only the wind knows... There is something about walking 
along the ocean that always seems 
to untangle me -- leaving me sea-scented
 and perfumed by an atomizer
 of cosmic possibility. Feeling that luscious honey-spill 
of light rays and pachouli that calls to me
 from the Crissy Field dunes every twilight 
I know... I sound loopy... 
But I like me that way. I walk on the sand and consider
 whose foot imprints flirt openly now
 with my bare toes, leaving their
 impressions on me in this giving ground 
if I were to follow along some righteous man's path 
will forgiveness for all my sins later be found? Can I breathe in the lives of a million pasts 
from one gust of air circulating all times at once 
in eddy currents of despair, hope, love, hate? Does sunlight teleport secrets in ionic exchanges 
whispered in worlds unseen and unheard
 by the seizures of man? Is the who of what I am changing 
as I rummage through the relics of sandy past? As I shed cells & respire 
into the atmosphere of Now,
 does the air commit mitosis with me 
in fulfilling some sated purpose 
with a plan to form other beings 
through the emissary of my essence ? What creatures do we birth 
from the expulsion of our dark matter?
 And whose galaxies will they portend?
 Are we the sun they orbit to warm their cold spots? In our emergence with an impartial world, is there choice, or 
do we unbecome to the pinpoint of what we are not?
 Or are we not knotted to the what of the us?
 Ego living on in the tensegrity of eternity? This is all babble, but I'll go on. I am just one big question mark all the time.
 But I like me that way... The Japanese rebuild ancient temples
 plank for plank as the old wears out 
to be borne anew -- rebuilding with 
the same tools simple structures millennia old Their history
 A heralding
 A visceral outpour
 streaming in muscle memory, 
The Past's gifts mine in the veins of minds. Culture becomes ingrained.
 Encoded in their people's DNA. Using techniques preserved 
lemony fresh, their elders 
and their elders elders live on... 
their infinity blowing the sails of Theseus' ship... The old is ever new --
 this happens to me & you, too.
 Our bodies rebuild us cell for cell,
 kiss by kiss, year by year
 Making all human beings 
walking talking paradoxes I wonder if we'll ever be able to replace 
a shattered psyche
 Prosthetically? If Captain Hook had two fleshy hands 
would he be the same man
 that tried to kill Peter Pan? We can clone Mary's lamb 
with an eerie precision. But why? 
 Won't she only just lose him again? Cybernetics promises eternal perfection
 but do we then cause cellular insurrection? How many nerves can we Xerox?
 Will that actually make a man? How will we ever know 
the damage we can do? Frankenstein used sky's fiery cry 
to make his Lazarus rise
 from bits of Cain he was able, 
but the gods threw him down a ditch gave him the Old Scratch to itch The Devil's in the details when a mad scientist 
gets hooked on a Faustian pitch:
 Money back guaranteed or double your destiny... The Gods don't like a gamble
 Unless they throw the dice
 They always make their point
 That's why they live in Paradise 
And if they let you roll them
 No need to think twice
 They'll be all 7's & 11's and
 You can bet you'll shoot snake eyes However I am the master of my own blue heaven 
I could hitch another ride, that's true
 But I don't choose to in a galaxy of possibilities, 
my dice keep rolling your point. I don't know what, why, how or who 
All I know is I'm a Right Bettor
 when the shooter is you. If I took the memory of your kiss on my lips 
And used it to light a sandalwood pyre 
then kept the incensed ashes of our desire 
faithfully in the Shari-den or maybe in a bell jar
 would our love live again? Or is that just another relic collecting dust
 on the shelf of one possible Past's unworthy trust? We are the reliquary of all that we are
 We are the combustion of Life's lust.
 Love isn't some option to be weighed
 and meted out in careful measure 
It is every particle accelerating in 
this universe. It is a must! "This desperation 
Dislocation
 Separation
 Condemnation
 Revelation 
In temptation 
Isolation
 Desolation 
Let it go And so fade away To let it go And so fade away To let it go And so to fade away...

about

The Difficult Fourth CC:PP Album

We would like to remind you (once again) that some of the lyrical content is not suitable for minors, their parents, religious nutjobs and anyone else easily offended by naughty words or material of a racy nature. You have been warned!

Due to the limitations of the technology involved, there is inevitably some background noise present. Live with it! The music is as good as it gets. And you may take that both ways...

Produced by The Pedantic Pedestrian between 2014 - 2015

Another "Cyril's Trousers, Yellow They May Be, But They Are His" Production for Bruised Banana Communications, in association with Closed Captioned For The Thinking Impaired (Fun & Cute Dept.) 2015

Those that download the entire album (oh! come on - it IS free!) will also get some spiffy, print-and-assemble-it-yourself SEEDY BOOKLET artwork in the ever popular PDF format.

credits

released July 20, 2015

All words* and voices by CC…
Recitations recorded live to webcam and GarageBand in San Francisco CA.
All music* and instruments by PP…
Recorded, sequenced and montaged in Old Hampshire UK.

* except sometimes those bits that quote other people:-
"Cantata of the Red Rock Shadow": words by Donna Snyder, published by Chimbarazu Press 2014, used with kind permission of the author;
"The Nursery Room Blues" includes fragments of "On The Good Ship Lollipop" written by Richard A. Whiting & Sidney Clare;
The Secret Bonus Track "Jizz II" contains barely recognisable quotes from "All That Jazz" written by John Kander & Fred Ebb.

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

CCPP San Francisco, California

"The sublime and the ridiculous are often so nearly related, that it is difficult to class them separately..."
Thomas Paine, 'The Age of Reason'

"Scientists believe that the universe is made of hydrogen because they claim it's the most plentiful ingredient. I claim that the most plentiful ingredient is stupidity."
Frank Zappa
... more

contact / help

Contact CCPP

Streaming and
Download help

Report this album or account

CCPP recommends:

If you like CC:PP Episode IV, you may also like: