My questions are:

1) can I have the print statement in the subroutine "text" directed into a file or into an array for use outside of the package?
2) is there another way that I can approach this problem that I am completely missing other than HTML::Parser?

1) Sure you can. If you'd like to unshift/push $test1 onto an array, define a global array and pass it to test() as a reference and and return the reference. Or create an array within test() and pass an array reference back.
If you'd like to print into a file, that's certaily doable too. Open the output file, say print FH "$test[1]\n"; and voila!

2)I'm not sure. If you have something with a lot of HTML and you want text, then you have to parse it with something. WWW::Mech has a good reputation. HTML::TokeParser's pretty nice too.

It's kind of a drag that your sample data didn't contain anything that you're searcing for in @field. I assume you're searching for the three capital letters after the /, correct? Maybe you could just split the raw HTML on those.