"rorschach" poems
I am caught, in your eye,
and I drown, in your tectonic wave.
You rattle, intimately,
for me, and shake...
You shift,
minutely,
soundlessly,
collapsing, into sprawling patterns,
into formulaic strains, of madness.
Then you madden, me, as you cascade,
into beautiful, and brilliant shades:
Your Rorschach mosaics,
in prismatic hues.
Each gemlike, facet, of YOU, that is you...
Burning out my gaze,
with your radiance,
as you irradiate...
I'd give anything...to label each color,
that infuses, your face...
Scattering trickles of light,
and roseate shapes...
as if your soul,
were a treasure trove,
of the most precious jewels.
Your vibrant emeralds...
your smoky citrines...
your sapphire blues...
your ruby reds,
and your royal amethysts, too
You twist, in my hands...
and, under the light,
I turn, and return, too,
if only to seek,
a fleeting glimpse...of you.
Jun 26, 2025
Jun 26, 2025 at 9:52 AM UTC
A Zippo lighter with a smoker's cough,
propositions the ladybug
clinging to a flannel pocket,
You can always trust a tealight
to warm the neglected beetles,
that cling to your chest.
this Ritual of the staring contest.
attention behind the curtain:
When You blink at the Rorschach shadows
tell me, they are not mailboxes.
The spirits linger; we stumble into entanglement
birch trees weaving
baskets from our branches
I'm known to cave on integrity, for the taste of freckles,
flickering tealights in the hearthstone, with a smokers cough.
Sep 9, 2018
Sep 9, 2018 at 3:08 AM UTC
They come on to my clean
sheet of paper and leave a Rorschach blot.
They do not do this to be mean,
they do it to give me a sign
they want me, as Aubrey Beardsley once said,
to shove it around till something comes.
Clumsy as I am,
I do it.
For I am like them -
both saved and lost,
tumbling downward like Humpty Dumpty
off the alphabet.
Each morning I push them off my bed
and when they get in the salad
rolling in it like a dog,
I pick each one out
just the way my daughter
picks out the anchoives.
In May they dance on the jonquils,
wearing out their toes,
laughing like fish.
In November, the dread month,
they **** the childhood out of the berries
and turn them sour and inedible.
Yet they keep me company.
They wiggle up life.
They pass out their magic
like Assorted Lifesavers.
They go with me to the dentist
and protect me form the drill.
At the same time,
they go to class with me
and lie to my students.
O fallen angel,
the companion within me,
whisper something holy
before you pinch me
into the grave.
3.9k
Not too distant beach tree sways in distance
Mandala Rorschach blot patterns dance like celebrating Salish drum circle
There's a hallow college sound of crime show to my left
Bickering with the occasional crush of,
**** my job is stressful."
A sleeping armadillo composed of quarks reflective within a drop of water
Fallen from the bottom-bulged North 49 canteen
A foot and 3/4ths away the snow-white generic of a ***** coffee mug formerly host to a Tetley green stands silent
Reminiscent of the eternal stillness of a mountain range
Fibonacci's name rings inexplicably from tilting branches
And I can't help but wonder if I would be grasping his hand in grasping a branch.
19 years alive and I can't help asking if I've grown-up too fast
Or simply grown into myself.
I feel old
young
and somewhere indescribable most of the time
and it's funny I cannot even fathom the length of 22 years.
A deflated balloon yellow like trend pants or sunrise sits like dejected missile
No longer screaming towards Gaza
No longer screaming.
A Holiday Inn Express pen sits with a ready-call number
Part of its mustang flame
If its quality of penmanship has any parallel to hotel service
Perhaps I'll stick with hostels.
Nov 29, 2012
Nov 29, 2012 at 2:34 PM UTC
five pm, mid-winter
i thank Sky for taking sweet time.
Sky sets her thumb on the light-switch of the land.
she stands still, she waits.
for the hour, she meditates
on her day.
Sky hopes her skin
becomes verdigris the next day, not grey, but
verdigris to clothe **** trees. Or perhaps she will
hurt soon— Sky scars in
rainbows. Her change of thought: the small folks who have traveled
through her this day. She wonders where
they all
go.
Open your eyes,
do you hear Sky’s mute call?
in her meditation, hour of magic, all
wakes.
on the earth, photographers peer from their windows,
then rush through their doors to catch Sky’s dancing gleams,
beams flash through the tip-top’s of the Sugar Maple family,
their shadows splatter onto pot-hole streets.
Sky brushes her grass and her roads with paint of a gold hue,
fresh Rorschach tests while her thoughts try to rest.
i spot a leaf sleeping in the street, deep wine and apricot,
twisted from months away from its Mother
the wind levitates the leaf—lightly—and the sun
creates a squirrel of it, he climbs the tree, and scrambles over
to me. in short squeaks, he explains his political theory,
“why do you let your peep el let a few rich folks control
all others? why don’t you follow me
into the woods?”
he grabs my skirt with his sweet little paws
but i look up and notice the darkness,
i look down and see only a leaf again.
Sky’s savasana has ended,
candles ignite in the houses, Sky and Sun crawl into bed.
i’ll wait now for the selenian Sun, but i can’t rest my eyes. soon
i will escape with my new friend.
bittersweet magic: “the moment” lost in the sock drawer.
five pm, midwinter
the afternoon is reaching an end,
Lady Sky decides when she wants to change for us.
as the sun sets, she meditates.
some call it the “magic hour”
but how can you truly tell magic from reality?
go outside and see.
radiant beams do the tango on the trees
(a leaf in the street becomes a squirrel as my eye blinks)
a squirrel who runs straight up to me.
“get outta the system while you can!”
he squeaks, then nods at me to follow his path, another blink
the sky darkens, the squirrel disappears.
Feb 26, 2012
Feb 26, 2012 at 7:31 PM UTC
many will know the beauty
of a butterfly's wing
and the delicate intricacy
of their decoration
those swathes of colour
meandering boldly in flight
a proclamation of
their presence
their providence
whose startling eyespots
can mimic the stolid gaze
of the stern and the alluring
observing in judgement
or perhaps in wonder
blinking only as they flutter
flattered disbelieving
yet there are reminders
in that Rorschach patterning
that those with ill intent
should observe
threats and
warnings overlooked
by those in admiration
of such beauty
where few will heed
that gossamer fragility
broken by any
not considerate enough
in their handling
Oct 2, 2023
Oct 2, 2023 at 9:51 AM UTC
Waking up the morning after,
I can only recall the excessive laughter.
The great vibes shared in one moment in time,
It was all so beautiful, the highest of highs.
****
My glance embarrassingly detects
the frightful fact the mirror reflects.
A bathroom tagged with the night's mistakes,
Rorschach like markings of drinks and rare steaks.
Always said "Yes", lacking all inhibition.
I wish last night I lived its definition.
So I readjust my head and all of the fixtures,
and pray to god no one took any pictures.
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 11:25 AM UTC
Do you believe
that a poem
has not one meaning
but imports as numerous
as the eyes that experience
its existence
and try to piece together
how it exists in their life?
that the core of a poem
is some internal light
that the poet has basked in
which has manifested itself on the page?
***but that for each of us
who is touched by its presence
it is an aurora borealis
which holds us rooted
panting in excitement
lost in admiration
and appreciating that someone somewhere understands?***
that an encounter with a poem
is like trying to find shapes in the clouds
or constellations in the stars
or meanings in inkblots
that within its randomness
patterns emerge
and each one may discover
exactly what one is looking for
that within this meeting of minds
there is an universal connect
a personality test-
that reveals both
the reader and the poet
so while reading any poem
it may be worthwhile to think
what did I learn about you?
and what did I learn about myself?
-Vijayalakshmi Harish
18.09.2012
Copyright © Vijayalakshmi Harish
Sep 18, 2012
Sep 18, 2012 at 4:58 AM UTC
.the rorschach test... and the gestalt theory... and taking a selfie... esp. if one does so using two mirrors - to achieve the profile: side "invitation"... or rather... i'm not minding the chronology... the imploded darkness... what is Gestalt to Rorschach? x-ray minus vision? the psychology of bones... or... what is gestalt and rorschach within the confines of physiognomy? ink-blot: either a butterfly or a pelvis!
to take a selfie, proper -
i always require to use two mirrors -
to take a selfie i need to bend
light - or at least my eyesight...
i need to use two mirror:
to take a selfie...
because... i know what it feels
like to have your picture taken:
by a "third" person -
and i want to remember how good
it feels like...
when someone takes a photograph
of you: with you being caught:
unsuspecting...
a picture taken when: you're not
in a group and about to say:
charlie loves wensleydale!
no... i need two mirrors to take a selfie -
and it's always... a profile picture...
the gestalt pause -
two faces meeting or a lamp-shade?
profile: on the side.
Feb 8, 2020
Feb 8, 2020 at 6:42 PM UTC
only dead boys hold insects like they're something
special
only a dead boy would let a mantis in his heart and
preying was always a better descriptor
because hymns burned in my throat and
i scratched a cross into my palm but i was never lucky enough to scar
but
oh, dead boy
bug lover
enduring a thousand lashes to save the soul of a beetle -
i'll help you peel off all your scabs to make sure they scar
thick tissue skin memory sometimes you think scars are the closest you'll get
to a wedding ring
you're a suicide king i think a kingdom of hearts was never the safest place for you i
don't think you understand the way your subjects' hearts are strung because
entomology entomos everything you love is cut to bits
and on the fourteenth of february you told me
the only purpose of a flower
was to hold
a spider
inside
and i guess that was why you painted all your walls with roses i
hope your garden smells as sweet
covered in your misfortunes
only a dead boy would let
a praying mantis so close
to his neck
oh, you freak. disgusting.
i ate the last one that let me this close.
you told me {if i die
leave my body
in the forest
by
an anthill}
maybe you don't realize we were doomed from the start or maybe you're just naïve but
honey you're a dead boy and
corpses don't fall in love.
[you're so genuine it hurts and i think
i could teach you how to be a fake -
nobody likes an honest man
i could teach you how to hate the world but you said
{the only one
i hate here
is me}]
freakish child.
all you see in every rorschach is mantes and
decapitations and
wedding rings you are an aberration,
suicide king entomologist your throne room
was full of termites.
with hallowed cheeks and hollowed churches,
i will assure that you scar
dead boy, if you die
i will put maggots
in your chest
Jun 29, 2013
Jun 29, 2013 at 2:44 PM UTC
poetry is bloodletting
for my aching hands,
brain, heart, soul, whatever.
in maroon, I see a *****
disconnected features, details,
themes, emotion.
all useless without the right vessel.
the pages may get stained
but the Rorschach means nothing
without rhythm and image and heat
and light.
Jan 20, 2024
Jan 20, 2024 at 6:47 PM UTC
Nailed the nail
in the wall
There was a
a metal plate
Emptied entire box
of those nails
Smashed in wall!
Fell on floor
I threw picture
out of win-dow
Eating drywall so
**** on nails
When I wash
hands, soapy, soap
Popping bubbles, rub
clockwise no, yes?
~Alan Moore? *
Jan 5, 2017
Jan 5, 2017 at 10:50 PM UTC
Aren't we dreams complex that bloomed
in the garden of *Rorschach?
ink blots with hidden meanings
where ghosts of the past roam to pluck flowers
Jun 10, 2014
Jun 10, 2014 at 1:30 PM UTC
You told me that real eyes realize real lies.
But I,
I am a dedicated liar. I devote hours to detail. Spend a lifetime of effort just to make them believe.
The only time I speak honesty is on this page, in these words.
through this mic.
Sometimes I wish that someone would notice somethings weird. Strip me down and cover me in these pages. See me, for me.
Hear me for me. *
Not this strained voice you hear coming through the speakers. I hate that voice.
She speaks to strangers. Imaginary friends. and shadows.
I hate that voice, it is the voice of a coward.
a child, if I can't see you, you can't see me. What I say doesn't matter.
It just feels good.
Real eyes realize real lies
But my mask is Rorschach. They see what they want to see.
What I want them to see.
"Yes, this is what happens to my hair naturally,"
and now no one catches on if I slip up that I went out last night. No one guesses I was with her.
...Maybe that doesn't make any sense to you but I learned at a very young age you never leave it at "No, I did not cut myself."
The silence will hang in the air until it is stale and awkward. The red light blips, the graph plunges.
The secret is in the details.
It's like, compromise, the more you give, the less they ask for.
Real eyes realize real lies.
You told me that you can tell when I lie by the direction I look away from your eyes and down your face but I've known that trick for ages.
I look where I wanna look so if I want you to think I'm lying I will **** well stare at the freckle on the lower left side of your face.
Real eyes realize real lies
Bu you, might as well be blind if you choose not to hear.
I am not stupid enough to believe you are willing to listen this time.
These are not fibs. And you know it.
These are not half truths and you know it.
These are not exaggerations and proverbial dances around the bush.
I am not hiding that I am upset now.
"Go write a poem about it."
It's a joke.
You are relieved I take it as such.
But I will.
And you?
You're afraid of what I'll say when I say it. That one of these days I will stop dismissing what's missing from these conversations. I will stop leaving the tension hanging in the air. I will stop. sling loaded for a verbal attack.
This mistress of word no longer kind and gentle.
I will be harsh and true and horribly inconvenient.
But I don't have the time to spare to choke out the words that will hit heavy. Not today.
I am too busy looking in the eyes of other people who are the same as me and while smiling and nodding I label them as dedicated.
And I wonder, can they tell I'm lying?
Dec 28, 2012
Dec 28, 2012 at 1:57 AM UTC
*I pour my heart in ink on paper
In shades from black to red
From darkest shadow's deepest demons
To a soul laid fully bled*
Feb 17, 2014
Feb 17, 2014 at 9:09 PM UTC
Mascara blood
Ash and ***
On the Rorschach sheets where we make love
**** the world **** straight malaise,
It may be just us who feel this way.
But don't ever doubt this, my steadfast conviction.
My love, you're the one I want to watch the ship go down with.
The future can't be real, I barely know how long a moment is.
we're naked getting high on the mattress
While the global market crashes.
As death fills the streets we're Conceiving life ,
Everything is doomed, and nothing will be spared
Don't they see the darkness rising?
Good luck figuring oblivion
We're getting out now while we can
I've brought my mother's depression
You've got your father's scorn and a wayward aunt's schizophrenia.
But everything is fine
Don't give into despair
Because I love you.
Jun 11, 2016
Jun 11, 2016 at 4:59 PM UTC
butterflied flay of cloud
Rorschach blots
cricket white on nursery blue
skilled autopsy of the summer sky
i feel like raw skin having a plaster removed
Mar 26, 2024
Mar 26, 2024 at 6:12 PM UTC
the brightest star
of that well-known
oft mistaken
constellation
disfigured and disguised
by the shifting
of Rorschach’s clouds
the temporary flair
of an unremarkable
astral body
burning through
the upper atmosphere
forgotten immediately
as it fades
along with
any accompanying wish
the strobing beacon
of wingtip
or undercarriage
marking the distance
needed for safety
moving through turbulence
restlessness and discomfort
watched with
ill-considered envy
in this overcast
night sky
those twinkling lights
will often go
unnoticed or
simply ignored
Jan 6, 2023
Jan 6, 2023 at 7:26 AM UTC
The artist only used black,
he wouldn't say why his mum named him after a King
in palaces where feral children investigate
the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle from their sofa where
they translated “idiot savant” as
stupid servant was written on permanent files
somewhere hidden alongside
DVDs that were posted on line showing monkeys in boxes
throwing themselves to death against perspex walls
splattering Rorschach patterns of childish nightmares,
the boogeyman.
A butterfly.
Jan 4, 2013
Jan 4, 2013 at 11:54 AM UTC
I really have a soft spot for winter weather
It’s sweater time
It’s scarf time
It’s cuddle time…or a-little-more-than-cuddling time
And it’s sweaters and scarves indoors time because people seem determined to hide the aftermath of mouths that have overstayed their welcome
In the corners of shoulders and collarbones
Tracing tracheas to chests and lingering just out of reach of lips
And because I’ve been taught to hide these marks, I do
But if I could, I would accessorize with necklaces of purple and blue
Passionate hues that grow from teeth and tongues
Can you paint with all the colors of the
Winding veins that spindle into spirals around blood and bones and vitals
Can you decorate the blank canvas of my neck
With Rorschach tests that I’ll spend the next few days
Analyzing and decoding
Finding new shapes just for fun
And then we’ll start again with stripes and spots and splotches
Remembering that the fireworks we call cliché are interchangeable with capillaries
Bursting under layers of skin
To later be concealed under layers of cloth
And people will blush when the consistency in their color is questioned
And they’ll tug their collars higher
But I’ll always have a love for the fact that these are bruises that come from beauty
That these bodies end up damaged in the most gentle of ways
And please don’t put a negative spin on damage
Because I know of people that will spend all kinds of money for outfits that look like they’ve been through hell and back
Because distress is a style and the aesthetic is stunning
And even though people joke as they will
I’m secretly proud to wear a badge of black and blue
On the corner of my collar claiming
You Were Here
And I’ll pin one to your neckline
Signed and dated
I Was Here
And the blood that we’ve drawn to the insides of each other’s skin
Only mirrors the blush that appears on my face when I smile and think
I really am lucky to have you
And it’s sweater weather outside so these bruises will stay confined
Under the snowy scarves we’re told to keep
But I’ll admire this art as it fades through the week
Tracing over physical proof of nights that fall into the past
And scrutinizing the speed at which they do
Adoring the marks that no one else seems to
Because aftermaths confirm realities
And I could never disdain the colors that tell the world who we are to each other
And how we stay warm in the winter
Nov 22, 2014
Nov 22, 2014 at 10:13 PM UTC
Another ‘hello’ from Hollow Head Island!
Yesterday we took the ‘Journey to
the Center of the Earth’ tour. Down, down
into a deep crevasse, two miles to see
the Rorschach Sandstones! I shall have
to write to you about panpsychism,
about the ‘antecedents problematic’.
It was like being inside a volcano.
The tremors remain inside of me. How can
I even think at all? Remind me. Was it
Protagoras or Pythagoras who jumped
into the volcano? The antecedents thing
suggests ‘he jumped’ sufficient, precedent
enough, enough to be a god.
Apr 18, 2010
Apr 18, 2010 at 4:47 PM UTC
There is a concept in religious circles here
(and other shapes;
rectangles, rhombuses,
rorschach blots freckled with faith)
that the way to get closest to a person
is to not touch them.
So
they laid in your car side by side,
her elbow holding her head up like
an exhibit on falling, on disbelief
and you puffed up your unshaven cheeks
and blew in her face.
It blew her eyelashes back and they
bowed their blonde-headed arms at you,
They heard you tell her a
bedtime story with your eyes closed
and they laid down to sleep too, lacquered down with
air conditioning fluid brushed wet through the desert nighttime air.
At dawn,
you promised you wouldn't touch her
as you
lit a cigarette and held it to her mouth,
her lips an inch from your knuckles
and she breathed you in and blew
the smoke out the car window where it
hung suspended like a ghost.
Jul 16, 2011
Jul 16, 2011 at 4:42 PM UTC
I write to remember myself
as the gray groggy foggy world hisses static noises
the loud clouds with jagged glass edges look to shred.
Sometimes I don't even feel pieces stuck in my bleeding spirit--
leaking ancient memories of magical imagination lands
where genies, centaurs and shadowy demons threw parties
with me as as the effigy on a pyre.
I write to remind myself
of my gypsy campfire spirit of honest expression--
each written word strips away another layer of clothing
dancing, a **** psychedelic sufi with Rorschach wings
watercolor tattoos of musical grooves pour out from my throat
as the roaring noises of cult-ure's hymns billow
around with clash jangling crankling sounds.
I write to remember
echoed words from eons past
beating and breathing through me,
an infinity of laughing gasps gassing anxious neurons
screaming from the shattered shards of surrounding glass clouds--
reminding myself I can choose the reality.
I write so I'm not in a fugue of confused pain.
Jun 9, 2015
Jun 9, 2015 at 7:43 PM UTC
I like to walk through the apartment
at night to be sure nothing
has moved, to be sure I still belong. I quiz myself
on the layout of furniture darker than air
with my hands above my head
so I can’t cheat. I know
where the lamp sits, just out of reach.
It was a glass of water I was after
or just darkness or to check the faucet
was still dripping into rusty Rorschach portraits
like the first cave drawings made by accident
when they pressed their sooty faces
against the cool cave wall.
The man across the hallway steps out
around midnight, he pretends
to hold a cigarette in his teeth, to light up and love
every breath. When the leaves are crunching like tonight,
I know he’s outside puffing on air. His fingers rest
lightly on his lips, he flicks nothing into the street.
Sometimes I follow him out,
ask for a light and we stand together
on the sidewalk, pretending to risk it all.
Feb 6, 2012
Feb 6, 2012 at 8:16 PM UTC
I surveyed from my electric piano
Seated in monotonous comfort
In the skewed seat of a classroom, to the left
In my orb of scrutiny
The light was yellow and thin
Each child seemingly no good
Sewing away at their desks, the days literature
One of them contorted, still feet facing forward
Her petite waist shifted mechanically and geared to a stop in my direction
In native culture, her spirit would be something feline and pleased
It was in her focused grey stare, fluorescing milky blue
Her iris’s de-crystalized and oscillated in thick Rorschach drops
As the spell was cast I remained, seated in observation
Wanting to style her maniacal lips
Our thoughts made love in a cloud above this sea of starving fish
Apr 26, 2012
Apr 26, 2012 at 10:38 AM UTC