Today’s NaPo prompt was to write a poem in the form of a to-do list for an unusual person or character. I made a list for Omar Khayyam using some of his poetry as a guide.

---

“Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight:
And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught
The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light.”

Today I shall make math in the morning,
After a bit of love, and some science
To make the wine taste much finer.
Then I will make time to mend this tent.

Today, I must check the new calendar
To see if it works well enough to
Decide if today is the day after
Yesterday and the one before tomorrow.

“Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse–and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness–
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.”

And love you I shall, until time for food,
And drink. Let us upset the local
Sufis a bit, they see me as atheist,
But they are wrong as this is heaven.

Then I must write for the art,
A bust of poetry as I lie with thee.
Who will know me in a thousand years?
I must get this damn sandal fixed.

Then I recall I must teach that class.
Oh, how to find the time?
Let us make a Sultan’s list,
As I’ll think of love and wine.

(Quotations are from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, written by Omar Khayyam, translated by Edward Fitzgerald.)

---

Look both ways for Epicurean delights.
Mind the gaps with humorous and perverse exalting
gratification of the senses. Tomorrow we can decide what happens then.