13 Ways of Looking at an Underground Man

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the mouth of the underground man.

 

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

One of the blackbirds told me that unless
I shooed away the other blackbirds,
I would never act, and therefore,
Amount to nothing.

 

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

The underground man then pointed out all
The other parts of the pantomime.

 

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

Apparently one plus one does not equal two.
Deal with it, underground man.

 

V
Underground men do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

Because they are underground and
Never hear blackbirds whistling in the first place.

 

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
It is Russia. Why is this surprising?

 

VII
O thin heroes of St. Petersburg,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the muddy feet
Of the women about you?

 

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I will not share them, for I am

An underground man.

 

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

The circles are really squares.
When you put that one together,
Give me a call.

 

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Gatsby became dismayed because the
Green light was his.
Gatsby, may I borrow some money?
Says the underground man.

 

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For soldiers looking to

Punch him in his
Underground shoulder.

 

XII
The river is moving.
The underground man must be whining.

 

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
Yellow and murky snow.

Like the laws of nature dictate, or
Like a dog peeing from the frozen heavens.
Either or.

Heading Underground Once Again

Here we are gentle reader, heading somewhere but not here, steering our attention to heroes and mud and nothing in between, celebrating laziness so long as it is certainly present and accounted for.

We are going Underground.

Call it sickness, call it self-aware loathing, call it a whine-fest. Whatever. I am excited.

Here are my Top 5 Reasons for wanting to head Underground:

1. I like saying the author's name. It's like a verbal jungle-gym.

2. There is a shoulder duel. Just shoulders and spite. Something I have always wanted to do. In the hallway...

3.  I love puzzles, and page for page these Notes have more paradoxes to unravel than anything else we read.

4. Our unnamed narrator sounds crazy. And maybe he is crazy, but this is beside the point, because whatever he is, he is saying a whole lot of things. To be sure, I would never say some of the things he says, but there are some things he says that I would want to say. And probably never will. For whatever reason. But he says them, which means I am not alone in my thinking, and this comforts me.

5. Simply, I can leave. The Underground ends the moment I close the book. Thoughts and ideas and insults and laughs and headaches linger only if I allow them. Such is the awesome power of reading.

Who knew.