Local Colour

Once upon a time a young princess
was feeling blue on account of her
chequered history,
or – more accurately – the old grey King,
seeing red on spying a love note
(albeit purple prose rather than informed blue porn),
locked her up, as tradition demands,
in a tall tower.

Her suitor, silly lemon, was yellow,
and in a blue funk spruced himself up
to brown-nose at court, as he’d heard
once in a blue moon the King gave
the green light to a white knight.
Sadly, his blanching terror was such
that he blacked out.

Afterwards, they said, he was green with envy
when he heard that a transparent nobody –
clearly a shady character –
had shinned up the tower in camouflage
for the first bite of the cherry.
The princess was in the pink
and the golden boy curled his lips
like a cat who’d got the cream.

They made a mint from the story,
which framed the old King
and painted a bad picture of life still at court.
But then, what did they expect
from rose-tinted spectacles?
The facts were all there in black and white;
they just added a bit of local colour.

Local Colour was published by Mslexia in 2002, in their colour-themed issue.