POETRY   

the book had gone underground   -    Photo by Mike Lambert                               

If a Body Catch a Body
by Steve Surryhne

​​It was 1960, I was 16,
the book, published in '51,
had gone underground,
reaching me finally,
holed up where I was
most often to be found,
reading in my room.
 
It could not be assigned
in schools at that time
(though I had teachers who
would have liked to.)
My true school was the wire rack
carousel in the all-night market
where I found Watts, and Kerouac.
 
What a shock it was,
a shock of recognition--
I emerged seeing through new eyes,
yet my own, I saw
the alienated youthful truth of it:
 
it's the phonies who run things,
who make the rules for their own benefit,
who snooze, blissfully unaware
that life is so unfair, thanks to them!
 
My adolescent solitude
had been breached,
there were others,
who felt these things,
I was not the only one,
who kept these thoughts
until now unexpressed!
 
I had read the words
of my own mute protest,
heard the voice of my secret self:
 
“Sleep tight ya morons!”

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​Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at San Francisco State University from 1993-2012. He is currently semi-retired and has recently returned to writing poetry. A native of San Francisco, he was a baby-beat in the sixties, knew some of the beat poets and is now a neo-beat. In his alternate career, he worked in Community Mental Health in San Francisco from 1979-2012. He took first place in the Jack Kerouac Poetry contest in 2015 and has published in The Blue Moon Review and Interpretations. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos. 
​

Other Work in this Issue:
Poetry:  
Day Job

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