Odysseus is being an asshole again,
looking for a few more suitors to kill.
He’s always surrounded himself with stupid men
who lack intelligence, circumspection, and will
and simply want to eat and drink their fill.
Telemachus doesn’t quite know what his dad wants
and doubts he’s meeting paternal expectations.
They’ve nothing left for him – those boyhood haunts
and sites of sundry adolescent elations.
Penelope misses the days of the suitors.
They were classier than these fools from Troy
who fancy themselves Telemachus’s tutors –
this son who’s less than a man but more than a boy.
(No, none of this is on the pottery…
but it’s easy to conjecture post-Odyssey.)
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