Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • Yearn Something

    We’re not at home, not reliably,
    in the interpreted world – Rainer Maria Rilke

    My therapist has given me an assignment. I am supposed to write what I yearn for, and how I am going to make it happen. So let’s see. He has a model, but I swear I got so many C’s on assignments in my life because I didn’t follow a format or “respond to the prompt” correctly. So I’m not gonna screw myself by limiting myself by not doing it the way I envision it.

    I yearn to write.

    I yearn to love.

    I yearn to be happy.

    I yearn to be funny.

    I yearn to love.

    Let’s not complicate the fundamentals of life. That is all I want. There is a guy I know who says he feels the most powerful when he makes his wife laugh. This coming from a crooked, broken individual – as we all are. Makes me smile.

    Of course I would like to support myself financially and the way I am going to do that is by being a teacher. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Would I rather be in my underwear, sleeping until 1 pm, writing a word a day? Sometimes. But most days, if I can bring myself to wake up, I’m just so happy to be in a school. It is aligned with my values. I’m kinda sad that I’m not that type of writer who dedicates himself only to the craft, day and night – as I wrote a very good novel with this method – and I have worries that because of this I won’t reach my fullest potential with the english language, however, it might be just as important to reach the fullest poetential of my soul.

    I yearn to write something that will help someone transcend the pain of life. I forget this quite often, because I think I want to write books that will get girls to like me. That’s not to say that those romanticized narratives aren’t sometimes important or won’t help someone. I think they do. They sure help (ed) me.

    I want to escape the pain of life! Am I the only one who is miserable here? I seriously have exhausted a lot of the proximate options of daily life – take a walk, watch porn, (don’t) smoke, candy, run, get food, go out, watch a movie, read a book, maybe paint or write. I mean, my alternative is Walk to New York, Bike to California, or Motorcycle across South America! I am trying to find the middle way of those two philosophies of life, but it sure does get hard when the solution for my problems often come down to getting a hotdog again. Maybe I should just walk off.

    The point is, I think that there will always be an underlying sadness to life. However, I think that it is possible to change my life to make my direct options enjoyable, and build my core belief system and thoughts on a positive plane. I haven’t done it entirely yet, but! I do have more good days than bad days. And the things I have done to achieve this inner strength has been therapy, exercise, hydration, support groups, sobriety, a lot of writing, and trying to abstain from other indulgences – bed on time doesn’t hurt.

    What do I yearn for? I yearn to tell people that life is possible. I want the next person who comes along on this earth to know that they can face their problems and do the things they want/need. I want to show them by my own actions.

    I yearn to write the longest most beautiful book ever written about the redemptive qualities of love. So I need to Motorcycle across South America. So I will Take motorcycle lessons and learn Spanish.

    I yearn to motorcycle across South America so that I can banish the fears of people that look different from you – from both sides.

    I yearn to go on a road trip across Europe with my best friend and explore any underlying emotions of our relationship so I won’t have unanswered questions. I love him, and I yearn to be unafraid of all forms of love and beauty.

    I yearn to sail around the oceans in a sailboat alone. So that I can be alone with the world, respect that it can end my life with the blow of the wind, and learn its secrets.

    I yearn to fly around the earth in a plane, to show that man can conquer the earth.

    I yearn to tell the girl I love, I love her. I always will.

    I yearn to get married, have a family, and a nice home.

    How will I do all this? I have my ways. But these are written in an order. So I do them as I become ready to do them.

    But one last thing I also yearn, I yearn to tell someone that it’s ok that things change, and life may come and you/I won’t be able to do everything written in The Book of Benjamin Bonkoske, and I was happy, fulfilled, and free in every way.

  • Typewriter Tuesday 2/27/24

    p.s I was type happy tonight, but the purpose of this writing exercise is to slow down, so apologizes for the guerrilla style writing tonight. Next week, I’ll be sure to be punctual.

  • Belated Typewriter Tuesday 2/13/24

  • Monday Night Poetry 2/26/24

  • For the love of God

    I am unsure exactly where to begin, but I will say this – I struggle with some misconceptions about the world, and I make the best of what has been defined as mental illness/alcoholism (which is not just about drinking). I also don’t think it is fair to invalidate a person because they have bipolar or whatever. It is not always easy on my end.

    When I made the video “I don’t like how things change” or known by the diehard fans as “I felt this way, I need you to know,” I was actually in the best place I’d been in quite possibly my entire life – emotionally, mentally, and perhaps spiritually. I was at peace with myself and the world.

    I made that video to capture a time in my life when I felt that way – when chain smoking was my only coping mechanism. How lonely I truly felt at a time in my life. I valued Art above the possible consequence of the requirements (smoking) of the video might bring about. And lo and behold, I’ve been having a hard time as of late. Such is life.

    I am happy to say, that by all other’s accounts, that I have stayed sober (from drugs and alcohol) for two years, but by my own personal belief/integrity, having relapsed on cigarettes (which I have been smoking on and off for the past month), is something that I don’t really want to define as entire sobriety. Just my opinion, but let’s get into sobriety vs recovery.

    Back to my initial point about living with mental illness, I recently watched a documentary called The Devil and Daniel Johnston – it is free on youtube. He was a young artist with bipolar like me. And well, he fell head over heels to an unrequited love and discovered the supernatural world (through acid), and it all lead to his downfall (essentially, an unactualized life). It is very, very hard to watch that documentary, because I relate wholeheartedly with what is going on with him, and at the same time, I recognize how much of what he thinks is going on, looks like utter insanity.

    I like to refer to myself as an artist. I don’t think that art, nor spirituality, have to be synonymous with mental illness. They very well can be, I am well aware. However, wouldn’t you want art and spirituality to have redeeming qualities, rather than a tragic narrative – let alone a never ending loop of the same symbols and storylines? I would.

    I will put in a small side note about my own writing (which can be analogous), because it is important to me. I’ve been writing for a while now, and I like to think of myself at the very beginning of becoming a writer, as I might like to think that I am at the beginning of my life. I sometimes write some charature characters – especially in my first two books. Which is not the worst thing in the world, as I think it is an essential/accessible lens to look at the world through when your young. It makes sense in a very black and white explanation that is easy to accept, as well as easy for others to understand, because these archetypes/stereotypes are recognizable. However, the more I write, or the older I get, I see that life is not all archetypes and symbols. There are real people, as well there are things that are harder to understand than a rose or a horse. And such as with writing – not all your characters should be one-dimensional archetypes.

    I’ve known this for a while, but there is a difference between knowing something, and understanding it.

    I think there are times when an allegory is valid, and essential, but if I am to believe that I am at the beginning of my writing, then I have to write/see characters, storylines, dialogue that are beyond just a simple-minded explanation of how the world should look or be in a work of fiction. So I’m gonna try.

    Sure I’d like to dedicate my whole life to writing books, but I think that’d make me almost just as one dimensional. But I am scared that I am going to sacrifice a gift I believe I have been given, for ya know…being a person that is easier to love. But, the truth is I’m making that choice, not anyone else.

    I think you can read from earlier posts that “I have let go of a lot of old ideas.” And that has been both good and bad. Such is life.

    I’m letting go and have let go of a lot of silly ideas about the world that I had when I was a fifteen year old taking acid. I have followed a few spiritual paths. There is the little red book, there is the big blue book, there is the bible, and all sorts of other ways to walk with/to God. However, I think that you have to think outside of the book in life, just a little.

    If I’m going to apply what I said about writing, I just have to think enough out of the box to be free. But also admit that I don’t know.

    1. I have have let go of a lot of old ideas 2. As a result, that is when you have to look the world in the eye and not as a piece of fiction. And if you are going to write fiction, it ought to be deep, meaningful, or at least funny.

    Lastly, I’ll say that I reached out to someone. And it did come from a place of pain. But I am not trying to define or determine what that signifies. I’m happy I had the courage to reach out when I needed help. I’m also happy they were there to respond, some five years later. And I feel a lot better.

    Just to make life all fair and good, I’m going to post Typewriter Tuesday from valentines day, just so that there is an unbiased account of where I’ve been lately, vs. any recent revelations.

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.