Thoughts of camembert

April 11^th

Our NaPoWriMo challenge for today is to write a two-part poem, in the form of an exchange of letters. The first stanza (or part) should be in the form of a letter that we write to ourselves or to a famous fictional or historical person. The second part should be the letter we receive in response. These can be as short or long as liked, in the form of prose poems, or with line breaks.

I’m constantly surprised how these prompts take me to places and things I never knew were held in my mind. With that thought, it seems wholly appropriate that I should write to one of my favourite painters, the surrealist Salvador Dali and enquire into his mind.

My Lord Marquess of Dalí de Púbol,

Please forgive my intervention in your consciousness

But, I am at a loss, and fear that only by disturbing the meld of your mind

I will be saved from this hellish torment.

I once saw a play, or maybe it saw me, I do not know, but.

I gave some part some meaning, my meaning, my interpretation.

And I felt it real, solid, concrete in my cerebral process.

This thought lasted less than the length of the play but persisted longer.

And yet erroneous, it lingered longer than the 120 minutes you took to create Persistence.

Those two hours, those camembert influenced clocks persevere to this day.

Birthed from your expansive imagination, fed by forced hallucinations.

What am I, your student, your optical instrument for reception,

What am I meant to see?

So please My Lord, salve my pain, where sleeps your meaning?

Forever at your service, 1962

My dearest Prince of Poetry,

Please forgive the tawdry fashion in which I have failed to reply to your heartfelt cry.

It is meaningless, and yet to you, it will no doubt be as the vast complexity of the Milky Way.

What you ask of me, is free-standing of my gift. Alfresco to my living room of solution.

What would you have me do, permit you to die within one of my frames to find comprehension?

Well then, desist in my oils, and compare my propensity for illusion in paint to your purple prose,

He de desmembrar la vostra fluïdesa parlada per coure el meu propi pastís?

Je ne suis pas le boulanger ici, tu es la levure dans mon pudding.

Art is a bowl of burning cherries served on a Turtle’s tongue,

If the Harlequin sings in winter, it may still snow.

Dali

Catalan: Should I dismember your spoken fluidity in order to bake my own cake?

French: I am not the baker here, you are the yeast in my pudding