Card VIII

Card VIII from the Rorschach Inkblot Test

You’ll have to sit down. This may take a while.  He lowers his gaze. Shuffles some papers. You know that every few months I have to re-administer your tests. He pauses. Then. We’ll start with vocabulary. I’ll say the word. You’ll say what you think it means. Here we go:

MELANCHOLIA            and she says a sad indisposition?

Indisposition? he says. You meant ‘disposition,’ maybe? Indisposition is wrong. Incorrect.

But she believes she has a right to her incorrectness. On some level. It is hers to defend. She feels that when one is sad, one is INDISPOSED.

IMAGINATION, he says.                        and she says bright?

But, why the question in her voice? Though he doesn’t interrupt her this time. He is getting lost in his thoughts of how he had labeled her on the last battery of tests he had administered – NO AFFECT. ANTISOCIAL. ANOMIC. APHASIC. DEPRESSED. DISSOCIATED. HALLUCINATING. INSOMNIAC. LETHARGIC. etc. etc. – and of how it is all applying beautifully to what he’s doing now. No. Not APPLYING. CONFIRMING. Ah, yes. That’s the correct word.

            a blooming flower, she’s saying

     but not fully bloomed      ‘cause then she’d be dying

              just a little bit       every moment that passes

And he has to look back down at his test manual to remember the last word he had read to her: IMAGINATION. And what else? he says. And she says

            a change            but a good one                       

                  like sun after rain

And he says, How about a specific example? SPECIFIC. Like a geographical exactness. Like a point where latitude and longitude cross. But he is speaking inside her head. It is one thing to speak about what is misfiring inside someone’s head. To speak so clinically. So whitely. So crisply. But it is quite another to pinpoint the actual location of that

misfiring

            to go deep

                         inside that deep winding deep winding

                grey organ

                              deep and riddled with networks

only half able to

                        contemplate

or even function on a superficial level and

             how

                    how would he determine the dosage of

poison

     how

             would he know how much of it would be needed

          for her to begin to redistribute her

ANIMATE OBJECT              is that the person that lives inside me?

INANIMATE OBJECT            is that the same person but quieted by meds? the one that is like a wild animal hunted and stuffed and mounted on a wall?

GENE                                    is that the legacy of my parents? is it the kingdom of my diseased mind? am i answering the questions correctly? am i giving you what you want? are you happy? am i happy? can one emote with a diseased mind? and is it the heart or the mind that feels emotion? or is it the soul? is the soul an organ? can they EXCISE it? EXORCISE it?

DIRT                                    filth            squalor            

            a skeleton in a closet

                        a dirty skeleton         dirty bones

Her mind is porous. But she knows this much: if a surgeon were to open up her skull, her brain could possibly. potentially. disintegrate. in a zap. if her brain were to lose its container. if touched. it could fragment. just like that. fragment and become fragmented grey slop. but if handled carefully. with caution. it would be kept all fresh and beautiful. intact. like a peach with its skin still on. like a relic. preserved. FORMALDEHYDE. then. later. when they were good and ready. they would take it out of that fluid. slice into the grey matter and take a SPECIMEN that they would then MOUNT on a GLASS SLIDE and STAIN so they can see it clearly and they would cover it with a COVER SLIP and shoop they would whisk it under the MICROSCOPE and all of a sudden a piece of her brain would be captured like a photo. EXPOSURE. but how would they then reconnect all that dead tissue? SPLICE.

And he says, I’d like for you to look at a few images. Look at each one and tell me what you see. Card III. What do you see? And she says

      two people?      tearing a brain apart?

            tearing a heart apart?

                                   with blood?

           blood between them?

                        blood behind them?

And he says, Card IV. What do you see? And she says

         a huge beast?       with the biggest feet ever?

And he says, All right, then. Card VIII. And she says

               an animal?        and its mirror image?

     looking into a pond?       so sparkling and clean?

Interesting, he says. But why do you say your answers like you’re asking a question? Are you unsure of your responses? But she doesn’t answer that question. And his eyes are fixed. Fixed on her unmoving lips. Now unmoving, now trembling. Fixed on the shiny sweat pouring off the side of her face. And her eyes are fixed, too. Fixed on the image in Card VIII. It

                        leaps

                                off her eyes

into the back of her head

        into her throat her breath

                                              that catches with

muffled cries she wants to both

             inhibit and inhabit

    and the dream enters her and she

enters the dream

           and they take her back

           to Ward 9 on Floor 6 along with

      all the others that are like her and they

give her 30 mg of Oxazepam

                                30 mg crushed and placed

            on her tongue

the bitterness covering her eyes

         in floods of oblivion

delaying thoughts

               delaying the world as unchaos

so the excess of it seeps onto her pillow as

         vomit blood phlegm bile

and though she sleeps she sleeps

                    the sleep of the troubled

and her dreams form lesions in her

      gut

           that she dresses with

     maternal coos

                          cushioned by the

darkness

         because she knows the light would blind her

with the brutality of its unbearable reality

and

DESIRE            he fires at her in her dreams. And she says, Something I will never feel. But this time the vocal inflection suggesting a question is gone. And she says, You can take that word off my vocabulary list. You can use NEED or NECESSITY or even WANT. Just not DESIRE. And can I ask you a question? When I am old, she says. When I am very very very old… will I still be here?

intuition

 "Red Couple" by unknown artist

in your absence

in my imagination

i dream of you

i beckon you

you come to me

you enter me

you invade me

you pervade me

and as i lie in the stillness

i feel you inside me

and hear your whispers of

love in my heart

faithless

first she hears the clack
 of his shoes

on the porch his legs wild in their

haste
 to fling themselves around her

then the rusty doorknob screeches


and twists and he rushes inside so

breathless

with wanting with waiting he has

nothing in his pockets dry hunger

in his stomach undressed he leans

over her
touching arms and waist and

back he kisses her in the wrong places

he’d seen her at a general store

staring at an old woman who

prayed for invisible graces

her mouth open and silent

her tongue dry as the sahara

now she hears every sound desire

sighing from dustwebs light touching

gossamer curtains rain gliding from

the slanted rooftop in winding silver

threads – she feels helpless – hands

bound above her head he sees her wet

thirst flow between her breasts he kisses

their ivory softness they taste of famine

he thinks it is her dreams that keep her

yearning she thinks it is his face that is

hard to read or maybe it is her ineptness

at discreetly perceiving indiscretion

but there on her wide bed in her

shadowed room she floats above

her own body and his and finds

that she – always coldly faithless –

believes with zealous ardor in sin

Tokens of Awakening

I Am Earth by unknown artist

On this spring evening I am in my garden,

Remembering spring in that other garden

            that used to be mine.

Did I think it would last forever,

All the time that was, once upon a time?

I know it no longer exists for me.

I know Someone has replaced me.

But do I stop existing… simply so?

That soil bears tokens of my onetime presence,

Fallen hairs and nail clippings and

Champagne corks and lost buttons.

It is not by Serendipity’s Hand that

            these tokens are there,

But by the purposeful action of my hands,

And this while I contemplated the open sky

Of a single season that was Summer

And Autumn and Winter and Spring.

I opened up the earth for tender roots –

            Lemon and Daffodil and Lavender and Rose.

I opened up the earth for these, My Tokens.

I was Mistress, Master, Creator Without Rival.

I opened up the earth and the earth I opened

            no longer had a past.

And I know... ten years from now, someone

Will pick a lemon from this tree. Someone...

Or Someone Else… Someone That Matters…

Or Someone That Does Not Matter.

The trees and the flowers will survive my absence.

They have, already.

They have grown, and they have changed –

            placed in the earth by my hands,

            now firmly rooted in the ground.

And I am where I am.

I thought I knew myself, back then.

I thought I knew that image

            reflected in my glass door.

And the bushes and the flowers

And the grass and the sky –

            I thought I knew them, too.

I pretended I was setting

            each monument –

            each moment –

                       in stone.

But even stone erodes and crumbles

And becomes the old within the new.

i may blindfold the bushes

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the flowers

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the grasses

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the skies

            but they will still find me

Is it my agitation that gives me away?

My delirious air of insecurity?

The devotion in my clamoring eyes?

The beating of my persistent heart?

Is it my cry, stifled and scarred?

Is it my ghost, silent and serene?

Move aside, she whispers quietly, My Ghost.

Move that I may see you better.

We have beautiful hands that with their beauty

Birth beauty in Beauty’s Womb.

I stand in the presence of thoughts

            filled with other meanings.

And I smile – because it is good to smile.

The soft and balmy air of dusk kisses my face

And tells me it comes for me –

            among all others it comes for Me.

And the labyrinthine smell of the breeze tells me

That the hour when I am most alone is at hand.

Can I encapsulate this moment

            in words?

            in feelings?

            in blossoms?

Can I describe it

            to Someone?

            to My Self?

            to My Ghost?

Shall I go inside, now?

But to linger with Earth... 
                                       is so divine.

I am neither refreshed, nor dampened,

            But rather, awakened,

By this Awakening.