Rorsharch’s Test Poem by RIC BASTASA

Remember those inkblots
They have them ready
For you to tell them
About you

And so you begin
With the story of a Big Bear
With sharp claws
Hair all over the body
Big feet, and you said the
Big Bear is walking towards
The forest looking for Mama Bear
Who left little bear cubs,


And then you go to the next
You said you saw clowns
Teasing each other and they have
Extraordinary penises hanging
On their clown pants. You think
It was really funny. You were
Just honest.

Then there was a Big Butterfly
Lots of colors and you describe
Wings spreading and you said they
Are flying towards a warm place
Because they look so cold and oppressed.

Then the Big Bat and you said you
Are viewing it from the top
And it is flying
It is flying
In such a speed
Faster than sound
Jokingly you told
Them how Einstein
Discovered the law of relativity
All because of this Big Bat
Flying faster than a speed of sound
Its mass shirked and light got
So distorted it lost itself in space.

And you look at the analyst
Call it the psychiatrist
Her eyes rolled and she
Blinked and she moved her
Face sidewise. She repeated
If the bat, the bear, the butterfly
The clowns move
And whether they move so fast.

And you said,
Definitely yes.

And she scribbled
Her secret notes about you

You know she’d say
There is something wrong
About you
You are schizophrenic
To a certain degree
You need to see a
Full time psychiatrist

And you laugh

You have read about the test
And you could have pretended
Sanity
Do not say the bat is flying
Do not say the clown is jesting
Do not say the butterfly is fluttering
Do not say the Bear is shaggily tramping on ice
Make them still
Normal no movement
Something sane does not move
Something normal is still
Stationary, unprogressing

Reality is ecstatic. Reality is something that stops.
A statue. A mannequin.
Reality is a picture. Dead piece of paper.


No imagination
No metaphor

You will be a hundred percent sane.

You know what she wrote in secret
And you treat her for dinner
Candlelight, you ask her name
And tell her jokes
And tell her about yourself

You are a poet. You have imagination.
You have metaphor. You make objects move.
You have bats that fly for good reasons
You have clowns that dance the salsa and the boogie.
You have butterflies that flutter in your imaginary gardens
You have huggable bears.
Papa bear kissing Mama and little bears pissing them both.

You are trained for some creativity. For some action.
You are a fertile field where rains come and flowers grow
And birds fly and sunshine comes with colors of seasons in a prism of raindrops.
And by all means, you tell her, as you sip your champagne
Glass gleaming against a lazy light of this cozy café

“By all means I am not crazy. I am just a poet”

She pretends she understands. She sticks to her science, of course.