Ben Bonkoske

  • I’m grateful for

    I’m grateful for my few friends that have stuck with me in my life
    I’m grateful for Sam, and Nick, and Patrick specifically, and Tony
    I’m grateful for the tears when they come, and the times they go away for a while
    I’m grateful for laughter and good reasons to laugh (and the bad ones)
    I’m grateful for beautiful music that makes me feel understood, and hard rough music that I get to listen to when I’m angry at everything, and rap to make me feel like a mf
    I’m grateful I haven’t given up yet.
    I’m grateful for soda, specifically Ginger ale, root beer, and dr. pepper and mountain dew
    I’m grateful for my love of writing
    I’m grateful for the love I’ve had in my life
    I’m grateful for my broken heart and crooked smile
    I’m grateful for everything that has ever hurt me because it has made me a better person
    I’m grateful for the small few I can call my family
    I’m grateful for being in AA and the twelve steps and twelve traditions giving me a design for living
    I’m grateful I’m sober
    I’m grateful for cigarettes
    I’m grateful for blonde milfs and porn
    I’m grateful for my therapist who can take all my shit that I hate about myself and life, and turn it into something intelligent sounding, and make life easier
    I’m grateful for my grandma
    I’m grateful that it is 1 am and I’m not alone in this universe, not really
    I’m grateful for pictures, even though I try to hide from the world
    I’m grateful for the blonde, the brunette, and the redhead
    I still hate my dad, but not really
    I”m grateful for John Royse for being a father to me
    I”m so grateful for David Foster Wallace who took his life for writing so that I know I will never be alone and understand everything
    I”m grateful that I have a lumpy bed and a warm living room
    I”m grateful for television and YouTube
    I”m grateful I’m a good person at heart, no matter how bad I can be
    I’m grateful I believe in God
    I’m grateful for twilight
    I’m grateful the Government knows I know my apartment is bugged, and keeps me in check, because I know I’m looked after by something that I’d hope is trying to help me
    I’m grateful for teaching when I get the opportunity to do it, and the laughter of young kids
    and I guess I’m grateful for something else I can’t describe but I wouldn’t call it God, I’d just call it the crappy conversation the universe has with me because it knows who I am and I can’t lie my way out of it all, and suicide is waiting right in my kitchen

  • sky line

    Today. I went through my old blog posts on poetwithoutapen.com, and I am saving them as word documents, because maybe all of my writings should be on one website (or in one place). Once this website’s time comes, I’ll probably have to do it all over again, so I might as well start saving everything as a word document, uploaded to the cloud – God forbid that everything gets wiped from my computer (or this earth).

    Reading some of those original posts is a throwback (March-May, 2018) …So six years ago. They are all fragmented sentences, and I obviously really lived in a made-up make-believe world, that must’ve not made a whole lot of sense to the outside reader. Here is one:

    confidence

    April 1st 2018

    it dawned on me that if the goal is to achieve a state of home, which roots from a place of youth, then it may be best to stop looking any further. Memories of childhood aren’t particularly celebritorial and home wasn’t exactly comfortable. 30 minutes broke a four day depression, but that’s old news. Meat is back on the menu and my soul is hungry but I’m not.

    hahaha…yeah

    I know most (very little) of what I’m implying to say, but maybe not everyone would. Although I did write a relatively coherent novel around this time titled Spoon in the Road. And funny enough, I just picked a random posting, and here I am six years later to let you know, meat is back off the menu.

    A word that comes to mind with my writing is sincerity. Some call it oblivious honesty, or incriminating lecturing. I just call it sincere. I do not hide who I am online. And the purpose of these writings are to get me through the hardships I hold onto, and figure out new perspectives which can be shared, deepened, and explored with others.

    But to continue…It’s not that I “can’t control myself” with meat, it is more that I think meats (especially reds) create a sort of aggression in my system, or psyche that don’t exactly inhabitant my inner sanctum when I’m abstaining from it. I don’t think I am going full veg, because I plan to eat it at certain junctures and restaurants, along with salmon on a weekly basis. But on a day to day basis, I am becoming a vegetarian again. And here I will be, six years from now, writing about how meat is good for the soul. But

    Surprise surprise, many of my compulsive behaviors that have been plaguing me for about few months now (closer to a year), as of yesterday and today, are much more, even keeled. But

    I did get in a fight on Sunday. Stupid pride and immaturity. Doesn’t matter. It does, but I’ll deal with it in my own way. I have to eventually. Maybe it was enough of a wake up call to just grow up a little bit, as we all have to do. But

    Sure I want a soda, or something else just as sweetly indulgent, but I rationally might as well have a la croix and not a whole bar of choclate while i’m at it. I don’t know. I’m no sage guru, but it doesn’t take long for to remember something that took you so long to learn how to do, that you only been undoing for a relatively short while.

    This is my last little note before I head off. It ties in with the meat thing. You can do whatever you want. It is your own personal constitution. But at some point you have to ask yourself if your happiness is worth the betrayal of yourself. Something we know. And sometimes, we wish we don’t. Apart from eating meat, drinking soda, not going to church, smoking, staying up late, and wearing socks, I have been shaving.

    As someone who’s blog posts used to soley consist of arcane inuuedos, my facial hair is no exception to symbolism. However,

    for a long, long time, I would size up or down everyone I used to walk by on the street, by their height. It was always the first thing that mattered in every interaction. And well…I grew out of it. I haven’t cared about how tall someone is in a genuine sense in a long, long time. I can acknowledge it, but it isn’t important. It’s a sad narrow minded perspective on people, including myself. So I hope I don’t judge everyone by their facial features either.

  • Take it outside