Dueling mind
No, not mind but something else
Constantly fighting for what she likes
Never happy
But always empty
Dueling mind
Give it peace, maybe she will settle
Lets try and see
Not far from reach
Yet a thousand miles apart
She knows what she wants
Yet she still seeks
Like a blind man
She just wants to see
Like a baby she just wants to know
Her dueling mind won't let her go
It causes her pain
Her dueling mind won't settle
Her mind
Her minds

If our lives were like a dueling match, we would be the perfect partners. You can deflect every move I make. We'd be dancing th same dance, always, and neither of us would win.

but no friends and no invitations
from weaker, lesser duelists
three thousand on a mtg deck
like the true king of dueling

i watch the nerdom go down
you lost to somebody
who spent twenty dollars on his deck
and i laugh anyways like it means a thing

Within the four walls of this library
sit three walls packed into the corner;
shelves, stuffed full of books with dog-eared pages
and slip-disc’d spines and fraying edges,
and a big white sign, which dangles from the ceiling
like a megabat hung on a cave mouth, sleeping and dreaming,
the word “NONFICTION” is inscribed on its countenance,
adjacent to signs shouting “MYSTERY” and “SCIENCE
FICTION” and “FANTASY” and “ROMANCE”
and a thousand other sorts of words
for myth and fabrication. But in this corner
live the rest, the et ceteras, the miscellaneous,
the kingdom of protists; for instance, care for some ethics?
Marx’s manifesto is stacked lazily beside a heap of essays by Rand;
you can practically see the two of them, shaking hands
uneasily, the will to never understand already forming
in their brains, and others yet remain;
Capote and the Clutters share shelf space
with the Mansons, hiding helter skelter behind
gnostic gospels and silent springs and a thousand
dreams for Freud to interpret (translated
from German for your convenience); nearby,
Orwell sings war songs in Catalan, accompanied
by the universe’s most elegant superstrings,
and the caged birds, singing of freedom,
harmonizing a melodious cacophony with the song
of the executioner. Butler criticizes his performance,
and she probably would have anyway, but Friedan thinks
he has a certain sort of mystique and Dawkins offers his own critique,
going on about genes and memes, extinction and delusion, but
not hallucinations—Sacks makes the distinction; let us continue
to praise famous men, and their children after them,
these naked apes, with minds so ***** that
they’re riddled with the emperors of all maladies; oh, Morris
Kinsey and Mukherjee could tell you all about these things,
maybe over lunch with Schlosser or dinner with Pollan,
minglings with Machiavelli over affairs of the state,
or affairs of space and a brief history of time; but,
if you're feeling too full to eat, or to pray, or to love,
ask Frankl what to do, let him change your life
with words from decades yore as he keeps on
his search for meaning just like every man before, at least
that's the case when these boys’ lives weren’t preoccupied
by artful war or bright and shining lies. And here,
by the holy bookend, lies some old and antiquated glossary
which lost most of its “glossy” many years ago,
for one flip through the pages will catalogue the changes
between what we thought we knew about the stars
and our bodies and doomsday as recently
as your last birthday, and all the things that everyone says
we now know that we know; speak,
memory, remember all you can
about this endless, sundry cosmos, and
the microcosms that it boasts; bury my heart,
if not at Wounded Knee, then maybe at this
library, where comprehension and speculation
find themselves in coexistence, packed into a single
point resembling the genesis, and fear and hope
take dueling forms, those of fact and mystery;
and now all that’s left to do is read,
until the end of history.

An empty shell
of where breath resided
A childhood fantasy
unveiled as grim existence
Echoes of lonely hopes
with wishes unfulfilled

Crack Me
Reveal Me
Smother Me
Bury Me.
I'm Dead.

Smooth velvet wind
whispers Love across my skin
A vision of possibility
emerges as a prism of celestial hues
Melodic waves
push my soul ashore

Envelop Me
Illuminate Me
Cleanse Me
Celebrate Me.
*I'm Alive.

What happened on Weehawken Heights,
that warm midsummer’s day?
There are several versions of the “truth”
but none for sure can say.

The Principals were both well known:
Hamilton and Burr.
Aaron Burr had made the challenge,
Hamilton would not demur.

Hamilton choose pistols as the weapons
Then Burr proposed the site.
Per the Irish Code Duello
It was all proper and right.

Dueling was illegal,
so the Seconds looked away
so they could plausibly deny
that they had seen the fray.

Each man walked off ten paces,
and Mister Pendleton yelled “Pre-sent”!
Most think that Hamilton fired first;
wide and right, his shot was spent.

Aaron Burr was deadly accurate:
His shot, its target found:
Alexander Hamilton, wounded,
swooned upon the ground.


“this wound is mortal, Doctor.”
was all Hamilton could say.
They bore him to the City where
he passed on the following day.


Aaron Burr also fled the scene,
evading prosecution.
He had “Full Satisfaction”,
this hero of the Revolution.

What is full satisfaction
when Burr’s Star was past its season?
He never more held public trust,
indeed, stood trial for treason.

A person can be haunted
by a ghost that none can see.
Burr’s brilliance had been blighted
by a sort of infamy.

Towards the end of his own life
Burr said of his enemy:
“{Had I known}The world was wide
enough for Hamilton and me.”




On July 11, 1804, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr fought the most famous duel in American history. These two heroes of the Revolution were political enemies and Hamilton had done much to exclude Burr from the Presidency and from the  New York  governorship.  Burr,feeling he had been defamed by Hamilton's published remarks demanded the "Full Satisfaction" of a duel.  My account generally follows the account of the historian, Joesph Ellis. Any errors are my fault. Any items in quotes are words ascribed to these two famous individuals.  Aaron Burr never after held public office and eventually stood trial for treason for his alleged attempt to set up an independent country in the territory Jefferson purchased from France. After several years living in France, Burr returned to New york where he faded into obscurity. Alexander Hamilton is buried in the churchyard of Trinity Church in downtown New york.


Towards the end of his life, Burr remarked: "Had I read Sterne more and Voltaire less, I should have known the world was wide enough for Hamilton and me."[35]

Life, be not arrogant, though some have called thee
Terrifying and delighting, thou art so; sowing random confusion,
Overthrowing mortals with unequal puzzles of both extremes,
Humans, condemned, to collect travails, improvident provisions,
Live, Life! But only through us, for thy are slave to imprecisions, conflated constant reversible, the free choice of souls' decisions,
Random and inopportune, thy bedeviling choice of hurdles,
Our swelled heads so vulnerable to robbers and roadblocks,
But cannot thou onfess, rare is thy victory, oft thy defeat.
Until we meet thy comrade in arms, our paths irregular coursing,
Of our own choice, so acknowledge thou makest our path to veer,
Impotent prince, 'tis always our hands, arms upon the tiller to steer.

We were pirates then
dueling swords of picket wood
on summer days when backyard pools
were Caribbean seas

We swung from frayed and creaking rope
tethered to the stolid limbs of shadegiving trees
plundering the ships we made from cardboard
and splintered pinewood crates

We laid siege to sandbox fortresses
with cannon fire from garden hoses
muzzled by the ends of our thumbs

Our shipmates were the tabby cats
and german shepherds we dressed
in tattered sheets pillaged from
lines strewn across the lawn
and patches held by rubber bands
covering bewildered eyes

We were pirates then
dueling swords of picket wood
on summer days we buried
in coves hidden along straits
we marked on weathered maps

Surviving still and sometimes found
in the darkest corners of the night
and the cloudless wonder of the day