David J Bauman

I’ve been meaning to post about some of my 2023 publications, but you know: Life and stuff. But everyone has life and stuff. I shall try not to use the obvious as an excuse. Already I feel tempted to turn this into a New Year’s resolution, and I totally would if I were the type of person who made New Year’s resolutions.

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In fairness to myself, it’s been a weird year. In some ways a hard year. My brother Jeff had gone off the radar. He’s lived in Florida for the last thirty years, having hitch-hiked down there at the age of 26 with nothing but a duffle bag in 1993. Last time we saw him was in 2020, and to be frank, he was acting strangely. But it’s Uncle Jeff, we told ourselves, he’s always been a bit eccentric.

Turns out we were seeing early to middle stages of dementia, and we didn’t know it. I think I’ll come back to this at a later date. It’s heavy stuff, and I want to write about it, but suffice it to say, he’s in a VA home for now while we seek to find an assisted living facility with memory care for him. I’ve been posting daily (well, nearly daily) on a site called Jeff’s Song of the Day as a way of keeping a promise to him. You can read more about it there.

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Lately I’ve been feeling sore and fatigued. All the time. I’ve had bloodwork done, Lyme disease tests done, and we haven’t figured it out just yet, but damn, I get home from this job I absolutely love, and I can’t get much done at the house. I crash almost immediately these days. Please don’t write with advice, by the way. I know it’s well-intentioned, but I assure you, I’m working on it, and have doctors in my corner investigating. Unsolicited advice will just give me the feeling of stress to have to respond. Thank you for thinking of me. I’m just telling you, sort of by way of apology for not being here on my regular blog much this year.

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I did submit work to more magazines and journals than I have in a long time this year, so I haven’t been totally napping all the time. I’ve been aiming high, so the acceptances are few but precious. I promise to share more of these starting with this: My poem “Letter to a 19-year-old Revolutionary” appeared in HeartWood Literary Magazine’s Fall, 2023 issue, and I’m kind of proud of it.

LETTER TO A 19-YEAR-OLD REVOLUTIONARY

After Diane Di Prima

When I send a text message asking how
the interview went or how the resume
is coming along, you do not respond.

I try to reassure myself: This is normal
for you. You’ve been working overtime
at a job you hate. Maybe you stopped

for a beer on the way home. It’s the week-
end after all. On a good day you don’t carry
your phone. On a bad day, you ignore it.

But I worry, my favorite young anarchist.
I worry I’m colluding with the enemy,
selling out and selling you short. I ask if

you need help with repairs on the old van
you bought with cash. I ask if you’ve looked
at apartments with your brother yet. I make

excuses as I sacrifice the planet—for you,
I tell myself—as if you could outlive her.

Read the whole poem here . . .