MIKE DREYDEN Photographed by Walt Cessna NYC 1-10

A CRY FOR A SMILE text & photos by Walt Cessna NYC 1-10

once in a while

a cry for a smile


now and then

I beg for a friend


but you and me

too much history

the best thing can only be

that you actually keep running after me


so once in a while

a cry for a smile


for i wouldn’t dare

trade one of these days

cause you’ve been gone before

and i dread that malaise


i need your soothing, subtle and fierce effect on me

not forever, eternally


and now and then

as i’ve come to know you

more than a friend

some kind of warrior


that’s the biggest surprise

no more surprises, no more lies


so once in a while

a cry for a smile


allow me to crack your untouchable shell

why do you always feel like drowning in your own personal hell


if i make it seem easy

it’s only cause you look at everything so hard

but when i get you to smile

it simply breaks my heart



so once in while

a cry for a smile


i’ll sacrafice me

to be your’s superficially


to be your correct in effect and fierce loving daddy

your all around best friend

I’ll suck your fingertips and lick your tears

and stay with you till the end


so if you can’t do it for you

and still refuse to do it for me

then at least give me one more chance

even if i try unsuccessfully


so once in a while

before we must part

a cry for a smile

a cry caught in my heart


i shall love you always

even though we knew it was never meant to be

because i’ve been loving you

while you’ve been killing me


but i’ll always remember the springtime

and i’ll always despise the fall

knowing that you’d leave me

when first i got your call


and once in a while

i’ll cry for your smile

SUNDROID YOUTH photographs by Walt Cessna NYC 1-10

I was free till you met me- now i'm lost, in you're eternity, my love for you, so blind and daft, my only chance, counter attack- looking, longing, lost so sad, truth behold, the times were rad- searching, seeking, finding plath, diseased destruction, decadencence daft

Destination simplistic style, sensing something, slightly vile...

Realizing that only one thing can get me there, a drama undertaken, because you act like a troll, a jealous fool, a chaotic child, a starving wandererer, happy just for a smile, looking past what we could have been, destroying our future, better off dead. Love unlimited and yet in brief supply, looking like a champion, living Tigers lie.

Text & photos by Walt Cessna

The Desire For Deprivation Refuses to Deny Itself Any Longer

Text & Photos by Walt Cessna
(Originally performed as spoken word at Joe Birdsong's Reading For Filth series @ Cafe Rapture 3-07)

Peeling away the layers while peeing on myself, standing up in an old skool NYC
phone booth. it was one of those nights that drift back into your consciousness almost before they've even begun. I’m fuct up- pissed on myself blacked out and carrying a scrip bottle full of percs and dangerous ammounts of cold hard cash in my pocket. Plus, i’m in the east village which offers way too many possibilities for my JW Black fueled brain to actually comprehend- so i stumble down to my old standby, The Troll Room, i mean the Boiler Room, all the while finishing pulling up my pants AND running back to the phone booth to see if i left any change in the coin slot even though i never made a call. Then again who knows- when i’m like that there's no end to the crazy fuct up shit i’m capable & more than willing to try. Anywayz I get to the boiler room in one piece, well relatively. i seemed to have lost one of my shoes and gotten the words "$7.95 Dinner Special every Friday @ TGIF" stuck on replay in my mind and regurgetating like verbal diarrhea from my mouth....I sit at my corner seat all the way in the darkened back and perform the drunken ritual of trying to look perfect as you attempt to take off your jacket as seamlessly as possible and sit your ass down on the barstool without it falling from under your inebriated ass. Nodding to some fellow trolls, lovers us all of the nitelife decadence, i manage to rip one of the arms at the seam of my left shoulder as i waved hello to a particulary nasty, stenchy, not very nice wanna be trannie, then i flip back on the stool and wind up on my ass, of which i have just ripped the crotch seam. As i stand up I discover that I resemble an extra from a Japanese designer fashion show done for mass market tastes in a 7th Avenue nightmare come to life. Oh yeah, and I have once again peed myself. I am so not pretty. I give messy an extra couple of YYYYs. Thats basically all i can remember cause i woke up the next morning in a box on the lawn of Thomkins Park doing my best Basquiat impression while realizing i was clad only in my pants, still ripped even more obscenely at the crotch and that my shirt had transfomed from a t-shirt to a pink feathered and aquamarine sequined tunic of bad 80’s old lady gambling in Atlantic City proportions. Oh, yeah, somehow during my adventure i had adopted a cat on a leash with a tag on it’s collar that read Vanitee, no y, 2 e’s. I stumbled from my box and walked majestically across the park, my eyes stinging from the summer sun, my one bare foot now also sockless and covered in strangely strategically placed Hello Kitty bandaids, led on a slow march out of hail by new pussy Vanitee who was literally pulling me with the force of a super beast. All i needed was a cigarette holder and turtlenecked turban and i could be the 3rd Beale sister residing in my own personal hell of Greyed Gardens.