This is the Table of Contents for the first ACROSTIC MIRRORS book

              Table of Contents

 

         Fraternal Twins With Nothing Psychic

      To Judge the Odds of Both Living Past Forty,

               .....................  4

       The Radical Behaviorist and the Otherwise Inspired,

        The Clinical and the Otherwise Inclined,

               ......................  5

        Coming to Blows Over Capitalized Words,

                 You Say I'm Too Silly.

    ............................................  6

       Just Juxtaposition of the Contrapositive

               And the Unexplained, You

     .........................................  7

              Train Your Children to See

        Into the Microscope With Both Eyes Open

   Until Parallax is Focused on the Slide, No Longer

                  Dissonance .....  8

  You See the Ocean as Salt, Electrolytes, Algae, and Fish

                     History,

       Fried Portions to Consume in Explanations,

              ........................  9

   Tear My Horse to Pieces of Anatomy, Seeing Him as

                    Potential Glue.

                   You Dare Declare,

 ................................................  10

 

                “If I am Poet, I am Lost”,

     ........................................  11

     Set Words Against Me in a Clash of Ideologies.

       So, I Want a Name, Don't Want to be Named.

              .......................  12

   Your Wife Knew You: Couldn't Take Your Specialty Anymore--

  Is That a Fair Cut?  Divorce is Such an Easy Retort.

                   .............  13

  Ant and Aunt Rhetoric, You Divorce Me From My Words With

          "It's Been Said Before and Better",

          ..............................  14

 Making Me Tramp About, To Find a Marriage of Word to Word.

                I Look for Hitch‑Hikers,

     .........................................  15

Pass Antioch, Dirt‑Black, Crouched Behind the Wheel

   Of My Tractor to Remind Them, "I've Been Feeding You".

                 ...........  16

  The Big Gangs Bounced My Head Against the Sidewalk

 Pulling Me Out of My Seat.  We Both Went Into Hiding.

                   ............  17

     I Feel Love Slipping Into the Closet With the Platform

                    Shoes:

               Ignorance With an Excuse.

     ........................................  18

    I Really Thought They'd All Love My Rebellious Utterings,

      Trusted "The People" to Find the Real "Me".

              ......................  19

 We Both Regret Decisions We Can't Retrieve, Branches We

                     Threw Out,

      Never Expecting the Dogs Would Keep Running.

               .....................  20

       Was That the Torment, That Even Dogs Die?

              ......................  21

      No Rite of Passage Marked the Votes We Made.

               ....................  22

          We Submit to Dialectic Subservience.

           ............................  23

  Intimations of the Holocaust Thump the Crust of Our French

                     Bread,

           Leave Fingerprints on Our German Pastries.

             ........................  24

        Your Wife Just Deserted an Idea of You,

           Sees Only Sperm in the Microscope.

          ...............................  25

   Tilling the Cold Land, Part‑Time Farmers, Like You,

          Stay Only to See the Ground Broken.

          ..............................  26

        At Night, By Firelight, I Admit My Age,

             .........................  27

    Look to Life For a Reason To Continue the Fight

              For the Individual Illusion.

       .....................................  28

    Celebrating Constancy, You Realize a Different Strength

             In the Spirit of Your Ex‑Wife.

        ...................................  29

                 Lost in Your Science,

           She Says She Won't Speak With You.

          ...............................  30

Lonely Since She Left (With the Sunblock 45);

                 Lonely Since You Left.

    ...........................................  31

             Anger and Covered‑Over Holes,

        Patches of Smoothed‑Out Disappearances,

            ..........................  32

        Nothing Makes Sense Without Distraction.

             ........................  33

             Will My Love Give Up and Go?

        ..................................  34

            I Still Scream, Though Subdued,

             "What Do You Want From Me?!"

       ....................................  35

  You Resign to a Future That Twists Your Children's Faces

              And You Call Me the Dreamer,

       .....................................  36

  Make Me Outcast For Saying That Inventions Need to Be

                      Imitated.

                   .............  37

  Children Would Have Been Nice.  I Watch Yours Growing Up:

      ........................................ 38

       Thought I Could Make Information a Weapon

              For Them to Change You With.

       .....................................  39

 Now, Breathing in Numbers Which Substitute for Free Air,

                     ........  40

   Afraid That Nothing is Free, Not Even Expression,

                  ...............  41

         I Go Back to Farming and Bug Control,

               Microbiotic Manipulation,

     ........................................  42

              Realize Plato Was No Farmer.

       .....................................  43

        You Both Condemn Me for My Infertility.

            ..........................  44

          Any Love I Had Is Now Only Devotion.

           ............................  45

            Marcuse and You Deny Me Meaning

            And the Existence of Any Public.

         .................................  46

                    I Censor Myself:

 ................................................  47

             Used to Have Sex for Exercise.

        ..................................  48

          My Body Has Become a Free‑Form Blob

         But There Is Still Some Strength Here

              ....................... 49

This is Sonnet One from Acrostic Mirrors
my book to prove the viability of the new form of
sonnet I invented which I call the acrostic mirror.

    Fraternal Twins With Nothing Psychic
         To Judge the Odds of Both Living Past Forty


           No                    matter                how                  you               look         at           things         , congruities
        Matter                 but                    little                    . It's             how        things           fit                   together,
     How                   little           Equality                   (yes              , even         that)         can               displease
       You.                   It's,                    yes                  , how               things       stand,         not             whether.       Look..              . How                even                  things            are            at                  even               parities,
      At                  things                 that              stand,             at              undefiled           Be.                   Be
     Things                   fit.              Can                  not                even             be                  odd                even?
Congruities          together        displease    whether          parities          be                  even                 or...
 
                      The large cosmos and man made lore
                Engage in altercation for what we believe in.
              We build systems of order that tell us what we see
              But, Truth, that fierce trickster, defies clarity.
                Things seem to fit when the odds are not even
            But beyond our belief there is always something more.