#hysteria
The end was scheduled.
The world refused.
No thunder.
No rupture.
Only the insult of continuity ~
bread baking, clocks ticking,
the stubborn weight of air.
Belief collapsed without ceremony.
Not disproved, only exposed:
how thin the tether,
how quickly people flee the ordinary
for the narcotic of catastrophe.
This was never prophecy.
It was desperation in costume.
A hunger for the world to break
so the unbearable work of living
could be declared complete.
Nothing ended.
Nothing began.
Only another day,
and the quiet disgrace
of still being here.
Sep 25, 2025
Sep 25, 2025 at 10:32 AM UTC
~
*She reads the flaxen paper on her wall,
sees its patterns,
touches them.
They project her confusion in cold chamber light.
Stained hands,
convoluted heartbeat,
she creeps into the wall's design.
"Hysteria every time she opens her mouth," said the doctor.
"Rest will cure her."
She is nostrum,
and not permitted
to participate in her own diagnosis.
A man decides how she is allowed to perceive
and speak about the world around her.
Next time you're alone, look quickly at the wallpaper.
Look for the patterns and lines and faces on the wall.
Look, if you can, for her, visible only
out of the corner of your eye...*
~
Sep 16, 2021
Sep 16, 2021 at 8:08 AM UTC
how does confidence work? {wizassume, control, I say}
effing around
ecting right - effectual
use
ual expectations seeing out
-proper angle aim
ritual window looking through
see through the eye,
be the face behind the mask,
speak as gods spake
in the dramas
- dharma play passion
dance in circumstanding
conserving eE qualia
humming
sixty cycle key of being
You are the older of the two
minds used to operate your casing
think how you survived on mars, water
ah, Hailie Selassie can I lie and say I never knew
one wild black chic at the welfare office,
who wore one of those brass MGM lion buckles,
and swore it depicted the lion of the tribe of Judah
aspect of Hailie Selassie…
You know he drank…
I queried her faith in the knowing, she whispered,
*******
---------------
who knew who was otherwise,
secrets from the kiva,
live in the chakras
ladder of life
messengers meaning go do act re act
and after ever before
now became our
moment.
then. Now. You know the feeling, right?
How many seeds can one **** sow?
Semper fi. Such as use the faith in semper fi,
Tcells ever utter semper fi,
You know, in you, your Tcells never forget
who you are,
though as they age they allow odd
possibilities to challenge our
edginess,
stay sharp. You asked for this.
Expertise, in a word,
perfectly right use-skill-knowing
inside out upside down and back
to wards of reason so gentle
any hint of war begging
reason for one more
shot…
nay, nay, be tamed tongue of man,
be ware like, wait,
warlike did not work.
wait, calculate, go go go again
e be virus-virulent vigorous
closer, but…
Were you ai-mmmmming aiming I mean,
were you shooting me
a glance
across the way, wow, we do, yes
yes, alike
I think, Ja, like Einstein,
a little, but at thought speed,
due to mutablasphmisical re-ai-ties with time for children in it.
L-reala-aimouri, branded class of fictions,
legal as reminders, chemical stress tests, read
no. read. no. read. no… who cares
we settle or we splash, be hap may hap per pur pose
or none. Life is a joy in the living, I can imagine, as a word.
---
Those are suns, said Jesus to Bruno, see where that secret
takes you.
Dec 18, 2020
Dec 18, 2020 at 7:10 PM UTC
Fickle is the
swirling haze of purple clouds
whispering phantom pleasure of a fleeting crowd
soft lilac and sorrowful wisteria
musing with the late spring’s hysteria
Oct 15, 2020
Oct 15, 2020 at 12:54 PM UTC
I: a paradox
Find peace in delirium
Grateful for the skill
Apr 5, 2020
Apr 5, 2020 at 9:47 AM UTC
She is prone to bouts of hysteria.
She smokes on her front porch, eyes fixed on the drawling, dipping sun,
kicking at clumps of her wisterias.
She is getting hysterical. She is waiting for a miracle.
It finally arrives. She signs for it, waves off the deliveryman who offers to help bring it inside.
“Never mind,” she mutters to herself, to her future self, lugs it in, box and all, across the threshold,
old cigarette tossed forgotten by the road.
She unpacks it, checks for cracks, dusts it off, brushes down the Styrofoam packs.
“Hmm,” she hums, thumbs brushing across her forearms. Her fingers drum against the table.
Finally, she sets it on her mantle. She tilts her head left and right –
Maybe it’s the light. Maybe it’s the angle.
It’s the furniture, she decides. It doesn’t match, it clashes terribly. There’s really nothing she can do about it, there isn’t anything to be done.
She picks it up once again, looks it over, sighing deeply. She never keeps her receipts, never really returns anything, but with this – she’ll admit that she’s sincerely disappointed.
And she’s disjointed, she wants a Camel. She is certain the enamel of her two front teeth has started chipping, and then suddenly her miracle is slipping, tipping down out of her hands,
and there’s no way she can stop it
dropping down onto her tile, cracking out in violent pinwheels
smashing cleanly into a pile of useless shards on hard ceramic
and she can feel the teardrops starting; she doesn’t think that she can stand it –
because her miracle was precious;
because she thinks she would have kept it.
Mar 14, 2020
Mar 14, 2020 at 8:42 PM UTC
Have you seen a young girl,
By the name of Octavia?
Intertwined with shadows,
Of playful voices of madness
Do you remember,
When everyone forgot her?
And she was left to wilt
Like a flower in the snow
Do you remember,
When she stopped being scared?
As the madness and hysteria became no different
In the eyes of lost Octavia
Do you remember,
The eldritch one who's Octavia?
That unsettling childishness of the maddened girl
Lingered in her parents' hearts
Have you seen a young girl,
By the name of Octavia?
She's running the corner store, smiling so sweetly
With a torn book in her hand...
and a sharp blade
Aug 5, 2019
Aug 5, 2019 at 9:36 PM UTC
The petals of the rose i kiss,
Remind me of your lips,
Soft and tender and sweet,
like the forbidden whiskey in the moonlit,
which seduces me to sip,
In the dreams of my romance,
The taste of raspberry, the scent inflicts,
As i burn like a crimson rose,
With petals akin to the one i kiss,
It's wild, it's frenzy, it's illicit
Jul 8, 2019
Jul 8, 2019 at 3:11 PM UTC
Aggrieved at that grievous throb
Betrayed by the rosy rose
Pricked by its deceitful thorns
Hit by the pang of remorse
There is one thing I can’t control,
The Hysteria.
Those bloodshot eyes, the sulking façade
Those falling pearls of repressed feelings
Let lose is the pain once gathered
Standing on the lousy tip of life’s reeling’s
There is one thing I can’t control,
The Hysteria.
This delirium of spleen
This rage I feel towards all
All those merry, all those joyous
Jealous, for their luck is tall
There is one thing I can’t control,
The Hysteria
Deserving of desolate gloom
Meaning to feel the iniquity
The guilt of all my wrong doings
Is worth no good man’s pity.
There is one thing I can’t control,
The Hysteria.
Jan 24, 2019
Jan 24, 2019 at 4:36 AM UTC
I can't breathe, I scream, I scream though not out loud, inside of me I scream, my breath slowly withering. I can't seem to use my brain, or think straight. I want to throw a tantrum, cuss, and fight the world, do all I can do to try to breathe and maybe I'll make it through. Wait! What? Let me see what are these things that makes it so I can't breathe. one of them is math, though it might seem simple it's dreadfully terrifying, can't seem to get it straight... every turn my brain is rhyming. Another, is being told what to do, I want to be good, I want to obey and do it God's way, is it just the fall of Man that makes it this way? Or is it my own Rebellion that makes ME this way? ... the third one is the feeling of being lost, or stuck mentally or physically I can't stand it... it puts me in Hysteria, my mind starts screaming "let me out! let me out of here! I demand you to do what I say! I'm not your captive." Help! Help! I don't want to be this way. I can't breathe, I can't breathe... please
Dec 8, 2018
Dec 8, 2018 at 1:13 AM UTC
We danced, the cognate vessels
Nested in walls &
Cowered in blood
We buried love deep into
Beating flesh &
Writhed In Utero
We emptied veins of reason
Laid in torment &
Seceded in white gowns
We--Empiric experiments
We--Deficient devices
We--Thrashing threadbare
We--Womb
We--Woman
--
c
Apr 13, 2018
Apr 13, 2018 at 11:51 AM UTC
I always wondered how long I could hold your breath
Hands wrapped like ribbons on your neck
No signs of forced entry since I let myself in gently
I always wondered how my feet will feel on tile flooring
Stained red when you didn’t stop me
Just wanted to write down some notes and your arms were so appealing
I always wondered how I’ll look bathed in blood in the moonlight
Will it look blue with the night hue?
Pity you didn’t let me try, your cries made me lose my appetite
I always wondered how it’ll taste, human flesh from your face
Only the most honorable will be selected
The rest thrown to dogs since they didn’t fit my palate
But of course, I only wondered
I am only hysteric not psychotic your Honor.
© Sofia Villagrana 2018
Mar 31, 2018
Mar 31, 2018 at 2:53 PM UTC
A noose hung high,
For the man lost of mind -
The town gathered round'
For the hanging tree mound
With shouts
With stones
With condemnation
To an innocent man bound;
A burning avatar yield,
Dead - by word of town.
Jan 13, 2018
Jan 13, 2018 at 1:43 AM UTC
Never felt I was a sad soul, though I carry sadness
Nor do I feel like an anxious man, though I tremble
So why should I concede to the weight of my madness?
When my thought process is that of circular ensembles;
Simply just not comprehensible in my feeble mind
If I feel heavy today does that does that make me fat?
When in carrying another's weight you could see me kind
Feeling out of place today, could this not be my habitat?
When feeling is one thing and being is another
Returning to my former self will be my endeavour
And I see no other reason or purpose to wonder
Otherwise I'm wasted, an empty vessel forever
Just a sad slave to the hysteria trying to find a place
Just another lost soul, an exterior that can't be caged
Mar 13, 2017
Mar 13, 2017 at 11:45 AM UTC
Waves of hysteria
crash against my screen
before I flush them
away
with eye drops of
wrath
and a brick with your
name on it
-Richard J. Treitner
2016
Jan 2, 2017
Jan 2, 2017 at 1:54 AM UTC