This aspect is succinctly told by, W.Somerset Maugham from an Arab tale:
The speaker is Death:
There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, "Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw Death had jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me". The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the market-place and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, "Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?" "That was not a threatening gesture," I said, "It was only a state of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra".
(A far older version forms part of the Babylonian Talmud)
Categories:
maugham, death, humor, humorous,
Form: Narrative
While reading the ADMIRABLE novels of *Maugham
My mind drifted to the enchanting streets of Paris.
Teaching the plays of Moliere, my roamings started
Over CAVING *National theatre of Paris, or the Globe.
Next day reading aloud the poem “My luv was like a red…”
The captivating poem of the bard Robert Burns of *Eyre
Shifting to Dublin to feel the BOUNTY of *the Abbey
And the play School for Scandal of Richard Sheridan.
There are patterns and patterns of fascinating dreams
And I knew creativity and genius do face monolith
Like Mark Twain I had no unpleasant or stressful HOVELS
As is said daydreaming or dreams are derided zarebas
But can be constructive in some contexts of fine arts or science
Proved to be TRANSPARENT realities in the later years of my life
Visiting all the dreamed-of-places of my day-dreaming raptures.
But still daydreaming has not left me as I have still dreams of
Visiting the entrancing lands of Anna Karenina and *Nora Helmer.
+++++++++++++++
Date:2-4-14
Form: Free Verse
Eighth Place win
Contest by Shadow Hamilton
Categories:
maugham, dream,
Form: Free verse
The artists drawing an intense picture with astral aspect
We feel it and it does deeply affect and touch us.
If the artist was balanced when he or she drew it
Like the Egyptian cultures with its hieroglyphs.
It’s the third eye in fact the dormant pineal gland
That resides between the two hemispheres of the brain.
*In War of the worlds, H.G.wells’ third eye visualizes
The spaceship, space travel and the life in some planets.
Scientists act as visualizers too by theoretical research
To transform higher realities in limited physical reality.
*Gray in The Razor’s edge experiences that perception
Getting in a trance ending migraine headache forever.
***********
*The novel War of the Worlds by H.G.Wells
*The novel The Razor’s Edge by Somerset Maugham
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Seventh place win in
Contest: Spirit Eye sponsored by Rick Parishe
Categories:
maugham, war,
Form: Free verse
"Lift not the painted veil which those who live/
Call Life" --Shelley
"Sometimes the greatest journey is the distance
between two people" --Movie trailer
W. Somerset
set the bar for lasting love,
and then-some:
giving us a heroine,
winsome, but dumb-some,
who couldn't decide if lover or
husband was the true-one
until the day of compromise
when death arrived with final say
on which was the who-one.
Our misled mistress
could have lied,
not told the truth who sired
her un-born, sent her husband
less torn to die upon the path
to "ghostly" but that would
have been so mostly
un-Maugham-like. Yet, why
does Monet's stormy beach at
Etretat, Michelangelo's sensual
David, or this particular piece
of celluloid stir the heart?
You see yourself, your life
as Reality, copying Art.
Categories:
maugham, philosophy, sensual,
Form: Rhyme