Mice and Masquerades

A poem of mine from November 2011. This was one of my first serious attempts at writing and to date, it's my favourite.

Rat's tails and mouse whiskers, tiptoe across the dance floor,

serenading the cellists and crossing paths with unfortunate pianists,

whose ivory toes catapult them across the room, to impatient ladies

in masquerade masks.

Misfit princesses, razor-cut hair tainted with silver rings of smoke

from black-painted lips and pierced tongues, slinking across the

room to tarnished knights with steely eyes, who slip through the floorboards

before they arrive.

A whirling dance, sends shivers down mortal spines,

golden ink falling down hidden cheeks, as every moon hanging in the sky

will cast an infatuated glance, if only to pause and ask

'may I have this dance?'

The night ends with no fanfare, glass slippers long since broken

and laying in glinting piles in starlight, rooms left empty aside from 

a menagerie of rodents, their cacophonous squeaks always

going unnoticed.

Author's Note

This is very loose free verse and I'm truly awful at any kind of rhythm, metre, that kind of thing. I'd like to ask what you thought of the imagery, or what your interpretation of it was.