Blues & Bluster Source Material: November 2016

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/reasons-survive-november-audio-only Reasons to Survive November November like a train wreck– as if a locomotive made of cold had hurtled out of Canada and crashed into a million trees, flaming the leaves, setting the woods on fire. The sky is a thick, cold gauze– but there’s a soup special at the Waffle House downtown, and the Jack Parsons show is up at the museum, full of luminous red barns. –Or maybe I’ll visit beautiful Donna, the kickboxing queen from Santa Fe, and roll around in her foldout bed. I know there are some people out there who think I am supposed to end up in a room by myself with a gun and a bottle full of hate, a locked door and my slack mouth open like a disconnected phone. But I hate those people back from the core of my donkey soul and the hatred makes me strong and my survival is their failure, and my happiness would kill them so I shove joy like a knife into my own heart over and over and I force myself toward pleasure, and I love this November life where I run like a train deeper and deeper into the land of my enemies. –Tony Hoagland