Some years ago now, I started writing a series of longish poems on the gods and heroes of ancient Greece and Rome, and occasionally those of other cultures with which I am less familiar. The only rules I set myself were that the name of the god, goddess, hero or heroine should appear only in the title and that the poem should tell a (usually tragic) story of a contemporary human individual using a very contemporary ‘unpoetic’ vernacular discourse broadly in keeping with the kind of spoken language that the character portrayed might themselves use; referring only obliquely to the ancient mythological source.

Since then, I have produced many such poems. They are usually triggered in a flurry of inspiration by a situation I observe on the street or experience in my personal and social life that dovetails somehow with something I remember from my classical education.

I should warn readers that these poems, in so far as they tend to be written from the point of view and in the voice of imaginary characters, some of whom are imagined to be highly disturbed, deal with subject matter that some may find upsetting and are replete with profanities and inappropriate language and opinions that are not my own. They are an attempt to give voice to a discomfiting excluded undercurrent of modern society that is often drowned out—only fuelling its rage—by a stifling anxiousness, on the part of those of us who are more articulate and fortunate, to please others and be inoffensive, well-spoken and polite.

Having said that, the poem I post here is a fairly tame take on the Oedipus story, written in the voice of a chorus of gossiping neighbors.

Ode to Oedipus

Kid with a gammy foot he was,

picked up off the street by those nice people.

Well what can you expect?

Well-meant and all that; but the gutter

always eggs them back in the end,

when the old man in them comes a-calling

as they come of age.

*

That business at the traffic lights.

Off his head, if you ask me.

Screwed up and packing heat; away from home.

*

Clever fucker though.

Top marks on the IQ.

Personality not so hot.

Good-looking, but the kind who don’t know

what to do with it.

*

Heard he ended up with a mum of a wife;

a big chip on the shoulder.

Constantly down the Registrar of Births and Deaths

& Social Services

with his arguments and tattooed fists,

having it out.

*

When it all came out she went off

quietly and quickly on the end of a rope

and he limped off out of town –

just another bum

with a meth problem, oblivious to the world,

that gammy leg,

kids in tow.