I met Shakespeare at a bar in Anoka, Minnesota.

Buddied up at the bar with a lethal ballerina
who has just told me they are not afraid to remove all my lightbulbs,

I tell them I wish I could speak another language,
especially with someone who’s hot.

Later I will see the dancer everywhere I go,
because they traveled the world passing out masks of their face.

I, too, have gone undercover in other poets’ poems.
Some poets’ poems are softer than my decomposing corpse.

Regardless, the weather blinks the mind-games out its eye sockets.
I stand drooling on a diving board as two dancers swim laps in the pool.

There are things I never thought about, and probably never will.
I’m the first to go bankrupt. Don’t blame me for playing along.

Nate Hoil is the greatest living poet, published in X-R-A-Y, Witch Craft, and soon poets.org for an Academy of American Poets Award.