Warning: This work has been rated 16+.
The man I loved was a king
And everyone wanted to know
He donned his jewel-encrusted crown
And his robes of purple and gold
-
I was a simple bodyguard
That nobody really knew
But he saw me and I saw him
And I hated his purple and gold
-
Sure, his eyes were an emerald
That matched the fabric well
But he was a god when he was clothed
Wearing that purple and gold
-
As long as those robes were his to claim
I could never call him mine
No god could love a mortal boy
It was the law of the purple and gold
-
They tried to give him a goddess wife
She wore a dress of forest green
But he claimed to love someone else
Someone who didn’t need his purple and gold
-
I asked about who it was one night
Emboldened by dark and flames
He simply stroked my blushing cheek
Touching me with his purple and gold
-
I told a servant girl a week later
Crying into a bottle of wine
She told me it was best to move on
For no one escapes the purple and gold
-
Eventually, he found out
Just like I feared he would
When he asked, I just denied it
Cursed by his purple and gold
-
I decided to run away
Thinking it my only choice
I'd have to find someone new to love
Someone without purple and gold
-
Before I could leave, however
He chose to summon me
He sat me on his windowsill
Using his purple and gold
-
I was trying my best not to sob
When he started to stare
I blushed and turned away from him
For he still had the purple and gold
-
Locking the door with a click
And closing the window tight
He kissed me roughly then
My hands grasping at the purple and gold
-
He told me he loved a single man
He only had eyes for me
He didn’t care about castles and queens
And damn the purple and gold
-
He took off his heavy crown
And put it beside his bed
He now was a mortal man before me
Discarding the purple and gold
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125,027 Literary Works • 672,773 Reviews
This poem was so beautiful! The poems I have written till now are mostly narrative so I realized that I like narrative poems cause they are fun to read and your poem was so amazing. Ah, I really liked how you used symbolism in your poetry. Purple and gold are royal colors and it was really wonderful how you used it to represent the king's royalness.
Everyone wanted to choose a goddess for the king that matched his virtues and royalness and the color forest green symbolizes balance, so I know why you choose the color. It conveys the thought so beautifully, I really can't express my views nicely but this poem was really just so beautiful and amazing.
Keep writing! Your poem is wonderful and you know it!
Wow! Thank you so much for the review. That was quite flattering. In reality, I picked forest green because it%u2019s one of the colours that match best with purple. But I might like your explanation a little better.
Hey there! Plume here, with a review! And a belated welcome to YWS!! I hope you continue to enjoy it here!
I really enjoyed this poem! I really do love narrative poetry, and I think this one especially appealed to the inner love for the royal aesthetic. A lot of the messages in it reminded me a lot of The Song of Achilles, what with the one person being a near god and the other doomed to serve him. I really enjoyed the story you wove throughout the stanzas and overall, I think this is a really great poem!
One thing I loved was your repeated usage of purple and gold and how you contrasted that with other colors. It was so interesting how you used those colors as a mark of the king's divineness and power and then repeated them with different actions at the end of every stanza. It really helped give it this distinct poetic vibe, rife with symbolism and repetition. With this, though, I would have really liked to see the bodyguard given a color or rather a lack of a color, too. Extending this symbolism and metaphor would be something really interesting to explore, I think. It's not required for you to do; I just think it would be fun to try out!
One thing I wondered about was how the poem would be impacted by the inclusion of a rhyme scheme. As I was reading, it seemed like my brain kept expecting there to be one. That might just be my brain conditioned to expect all storytelling poems to rhyme, but I think it might be worth testing out. It would work with several rhyme schemes, and honestly it works without rhymes, too. I just think it could possibly be elevated by a rhyming scheme.
Also, just a hot tip about the coding of the site: if you press shift+enter, it gives you a smaller space between your lines which lets you save the regular enters for in between the stanzas. You can also just press space around five to ten times in the places where you want white space to be but the site keeps deleting it (I assume that's why you have the lines in between stanzas, but if they were there on purpose rather than a preventative measure, just ignore this part).
Overall: nice work!! I really enjoyed your storytelling and symbolism and thought this poem was a really fun read. I hope to see more of you around the site! Until next time!
Thank you so much for the review! I tend to avoid rhyme schemes in my poetry because I've found that whenever I try to stick to a certain scheme, the verses start to feel a lot less authentic. However, that is just a personal preference, and I understand why you were expecting one. But now I'm definitely going to be writing a sequel poem from the king's perspective just because you mentioned that. Also, thanks for the tip! I had accepted my fate and assumed there was no way to change the format. I'm glad you enjoyed my poem, and hopefully, we'll cross paths again!