Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • A Ballad with my Salad

    Hello World. It’s me. Mr. Bon.

    I am opening up creatively. The space of not working (or rather chasing) is allowing me to actually breathe and think about (doing) what I love.

    When I told my parents that I was going to dedicate this year to “writing,” I got this kinda bad feeling in my stomach of “What If I don’t live up to what I am saying?” and worse, I got a feeling of, “What if writing doesn’t hold up to this idealized notion I have of it in my head?”

    Good news, writing is still well and good. I think it’s one of the hardest mediums of art; You have to have a little bit of either lunacy or idiocracy to write anything.

    However, I am reawakening the notion that I am an Artist. I can make whatever I want! “Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.” – Thomas Edison

    When I sat my confused, worried, grandparents down to let them down that I wasn’t going to teach, I told them what I also told my parents. “You have four (grand) kids. Only one of them happens to be an artist. Listen, it’s not what I wanted either, but I can’t change who I am.”

    And the good news is, that with a little bit of space in between me and doing what everybody else thinks they should do in society, I am identifying a lot of the springs of my creativity. I feel like there was always something in the way of doing what I wanted.

    I think one of the worst things about me is the big ideas I have with no follow-through – scratch that! Big Ideas and not having the time to do them because of societal norms! I personally believe the reason I haven’t made an album in 5 years is because I’ve been so focused on shit that I don’t care about but feel I should be. Also, I need to practice…and get a microphone.

    It is the end of the quarter tomorrow in Chicago Public Schools. It is hard to acknowledge that time goes on whether you do anything or not. I mention this because I am possibly 1/4th through living this dream of doing what I love.

    It’s going to be a lot harder of a conversation next year. But I might need to have it, again.

    I can’t say yet that this quarter has been more fulfilling than if I’d been a teacher. However, I have a good feeling that the next quarter might allow me to get into a better groove of what I want to do. Art is slow.

    Substituting is great and terrible. Of course I wish I could actually teach kids something important. However, I’m enjoying having fun with the students, and I’m still going in four times a week, so money for one isn’t much of a problem. It’s good to not have anything to think about when I get home. And to read and write for 50 minutes (the exact length of my attention span) during my free periods.

    The school being a few blocks away isn’t bad either. I found a school that I like. I’d like to try and teach there. Maybe I’ll write more about that soon.

    I am not looking forward to working the farmer’s market this summer, so I might want to look into alternatives, like a YMCA program or something.

    So, anyways, let’s hope some good art comes of what is next.

    P.S Doing The Artist’s Way with my sister?

  • Typewriter Tuesday – 10/22/24

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  • Monday Night Poetry 10/21/24

  • Flash Fiction Fridays #1


    I’m looking down what seems like an endless road. It rolls like a river. My cigarette dangles from my lip as I look down, and up, and back down at my feet. It’s finished. I wave. 

  • I’m glad I still know

    I relate so much with people who avoid writing. It’s the strangest thing; The thing I enjoy most in the world I dread like the plague. I think it boils down to having nothing to say—nothing moving or suggesting that I’ve changed as a person since I woke up at three this afternoon. I “dogged” it today.

    “Hope is a dangerous thing to lose.” I deleted a poem I wrote after midnight…maybe last night…as time has seemed to dissolve, which is sort of nice. It’s better than the regimented routine of always knowing every Groundhog Day to come, but those aren’t half bad either. He it goes:

    ‘The worst kind of cowardice

    is a weak young man

    who challenges

    a once great warrior

    decades after his prime

    Oh wait… that’s a quote by Aristotle that was in my copy paste queue…

    Without you

    There is no reason to write

    And without writing

    There is no reason to live

    -Phony, 28

    And I’m not sad or depressed…….but I certainly was this weekend – just in case there was some earth-shattering change of plans that rippled into my soul I should know about. I’ve been really depressed in the mornings lately, and I think it is because I started taking hot showers in the morning before I go to work, so cold ones from now on, just in time for winter, which I felt its first bite today.

    I opened a door yesterday. It’s funny, I’ve been on many a psychedelic or psychotic journey, and I have come to a few doors down these roads, and I always fear opening them, so I never do. But in whatever limbo occurs when there is no reason to end the night, I thought I might as well open a door. I think Aldous Huxley (me) wrote a book titled Doors of Perception, and Gertrude Stein (you) said he was just a dead man writing to Ernest Hemmingway (also me).

    (ok fine, you, you crazy cat bitch!). Ah fuck it, don’t we deserve a good smoke and a laugh?

    I don’t get why it feels like we all hate each other for no reason – said from the guy who (thinks he) fucked everything up.

    I’ve been texting my friend in Asheville who has no water and electricity about how I’m trying to quit smoking.

    I had some beautiful words and explanations about how the American dream is dead—which to me is a love story— but I dreamt about running a marathon and chilling in a hotel lobby around mile 7 or 8 instead.

    I guess if I have anything to say, it’s that I still plan on motorcycling to South America and doing it for love despite love. I’m going to my first dance class on Wednesday since I crippled my feet, but who cares?

    Why not?

Ben Bonkoske is the author of two novels, Spoon in the Road, and Carolina, Colorado, California. He is also the author of two collections of short stories, Ten Zen by Ben, and Eleven Stories for 11:11. He lives in Chicago, where he likes to take walks.

B. A, M.A.T.