Here is my condensed cynical somewhat tongue-in-cheek but ultimately serious take on the Odyssey, as suggested by this week’s Poetry Rehab prompt https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/31982590/893323549 . My apologies to Homer and to the generations of rhapsodes and classical scholars who have labored to preserve his words.

Epic

Dad went off to the war & didn’t come home;

did a lot of dirty things;

shacked up with birds on foreign shores.

*

Tel has a thing about the father he has never seen;

& Pen’s nervous fingers pick away at the story

every day & unpick it by night;

spurning all unsuitable guys.

*

Dad turns up twenty years too late

looking like a bum;

remembered

only by a dog;

& goes out on a shooting spree.