Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • Light as the weather

    We are in my kitchen. Both of us have just jumped into the lake for what we thought was to be our last hurrah of the year, but, men like us with balls, decide we’ll aim for once a month year round.

    I’m boiling a pot of tea, and my friend Sam has some schmutz on his lip, so I tell him about the scene from There’s Something About Mary, when Cameron Diaz puts some splooge in her hair. He says he likes Ben Stiller, whose in the movie. I mention I like Tom Cruise, another 5’7” gentleman.

    “Whose 5’7”?” My considerably tall friend Sam asks.

    “You’re looking at him,” I say.

    It’s a funny feeling to hear that your friend of over ten years thought you were three inches taller than you actually are. “You just have such big energy.” He continues. And I say, “I just don’t make a big deal about it.” (Any more)

    This post will probably damn me once my name is googlable and people want to see what my size is an all that. I’ve always hoped I’d just be writer who would transcend my physical size. I know how tall a few of the greats are. You just wanna know sometimes.

    But on the subject of looking people up on the internet. I may be asking myself what are my thoughts on returning to the internet, whether it be to write, to post pictures, and to progress my career. And I’d like to say I think it is terrible. However, I’m sure there were people when the television was invented that said they’d never watch a minute of tv in their lifetime. And those people are awesome. However, However, just because you don’t engage with a certain phenomenon doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. That is, unless you live in a pretty self-centered visionary philosophical mind-frame. And furthermore, you are actually missing a lot of potential information and experiences which may shape the world around us if you are closed off from that side of reality – being the fake one.

    I think change is important, but isn’t it just so hypocritical to delete everything for a good two years only to come crawling back? I don’t live in a world where, “I dunno” is a suitable answer. My best explanation is that I tend to shift with the tides. I am not necessarily first dimensional individual.

    I will also mention that I can tend to scare myself out of my own unfathomable ego which is not a great attribute. So the likleyhood of me going AWOL again, is probable. And what is the point? Self centeredness.

    I was riveting my therapist today about how this attribute about me – consistency – or rather – inconsistency is a characteristic which makes it very difficult to live with myself – much less have another human being to have a prolonged relationship with me. But I am who I’ve got.

    I mentioned on Tuesday that I was reading another person’s poetry. And it was just a nice reminder that there is other tempos that people beat to. And we are like music that makes new songs with ourselves.

    We all listen to our own music, but it is good to listen to others.

  • Adaptation – Film Review/Analysis

    I have to say, there are some films that intrude on your existence – they get just a little too close and cut a little too deep, and perhaps open a portal into another dimension by the post-viewing. Charlie Kaufman is known for doing this sort of metaphysical gymnastics with his films. Adaptation, although cutting deeply into the human condition – especially that of a writer – does not cross any lines that made this viewer feel exposed.

    I related, I liked it, laughed, and felt sore at all the right moments. There is a trend, which has been going on for the past couple of decades in cinema, in which films have lost their souls at the expense of being a commercial success. The main character in this film, Charlie Kaufman (based on the screenplay writer of the film) played by Nicholas Cage, grapples with this dilemma – although his struggle is more of an inner struggle of originality. This film, along with other Charlie Kaufman films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Being John Malcokovich, are orginal screenplays to the extent that it is parodied in this film. And these films do have souls.

    I will state here: Nicholas Cage is the greatest for a reason. The Kaufman brothers – Charlie (the unique self-critical one) and Donald (the rambunctious warm-hearted one) – both played by Nicholas Cage, show the beautiful yet crippling conflict of being a writer. I deeply resonated with both characters being Ben Bon and Ben Bonkoske myself, and it is commented in the film about how multi-personalities in films are one of the most overused tropes in writing, but, such is life. Although Donald Kaufman is considered oblivious compared to Charlie, it is shown that there is an envy for that state of mind. It is also shown that the carefree, open mindedness which comes from not being pretentious, paves way for the true beautiful verses of life. In this film, the verse is, “You are what you love, not what loves you.”

    I think that the title sums up the message of the film. It shows that we are meant to adapt. There is nothing wrong, or pitiful about being able to adapt to life. Meryl Streep plays a writer for the New Yorker, and although there is commentary about the unfulfilling lives of the elites, what is most compelling about her character is the question of finding meaning/passion. It seems to elude her. She can write well at the expense of human emotion. There is a reason why psychopaths are extremely successful in the world, which is why they are the second most overused trope in writing. But she undergoes change in the film. Finding passion in love and drugs fueled by her writing.

    It is not a film that is meant to resolve life’s problems, nor probe them. Good art just makes us know we are less alone. And very good art like this one, shows us that we are meant to love. However it may look. If it comes from our past, if it is unsuspected, imagined, or uncomfortable beyond belief. You are to love. And life is a beautiful thing that we get to be a small part of something bigger.

  • Adieu

    I’ve been evoking a lot of emotion towards a lot of people I speak to lately. I scared the hell out of my psychiatrist. He basically threw me out of his office. I’m not confrontational with people, but there are conceptions of mine that can really upset someone who is too comfortable, and God knows, people screw with my comfort zone all the time too. I don’t intent to annoy or scare anyone. I just try and explore certain conceptions that are uncomfortable for people to accept. I’ll leave it in the book.

    It is a cool feeling to know more people are reading me lately. Here and there people will tell me they’ve read my book! I think that is a lot more rewarding than how Jack Kerouac felt after a rave review about On The Road. It is just good people, who it was intended for.

    I spent a lot of today trying to set up my website. It’s all the same stuff. I didn’t meditate this morning. It was the first time, in probably, six months that I just didn’t do my morning routine. I’m not here to impress anyone. I guess the thing that I must be aware of is whether or not I am beginning to fall back into old patterns that will surely leave me, slapping my head against the wood, that I am some sort of failure for buying a pack of Camels. (I’ve bought a few packs in the past year, but still haven’t smoked a single cigarette, which says something.) However, I mention all this because, after you forget to do your daily twenty minute quota, sit on the couch, screaming at your computer about how this website designer doesn’t make sense, and, surely I am being hacked, you really start to doubt your self worth, yet again.

    I hope you all know I don’t do all this strictly for me. Maybe some part of me thinks I am reaching another young poet. Or there is a girl out there who thinks the same as I do, and then we could live in a world where two people feel less alone. I read a girl’s poetry tonight, and boy, does it sound nice to get another person’s poems in my head (someone I know and who isn’t dead no less). Still, I had to call a few of my freaky friends and family members to remind myself that I’m still a beautiful human being. I am lucky. And. It hurts to be alive. And. I hate the way I think. Secret: Overthinking leads to depression. I really understand what Hemingway meant when he said that happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing to be known. I lika bein a little stooped sum dayz. So I watched a movie tonight. And fuck, if I don’t know some guy didn’t break his back so that I could laugh and learn about how silly this mess is. Now, time to clean up. Sleep on the floor until about 2, when I give up and hop in bed, hear my 4:45 alarm, and snooze until the nightmares scare me out of bed, and a brand new day looks like a naked old lady waiting to be slayed.

  • Monday Night Poetry 10/23/23

  • Copper Mine

    I can’t believe I ate a fucking Rueben today. It was amazing. Double on the thousand Island Dressing. Also yesterday I ate a Sauce Boss, which is a spicy Italian Subway Sandwich with all the sauces on it, and I ate The Big New Yorker Pizza from Pizza Hut which has pepperoni on it. Also, I got wings. And yet, I’ll refer to myself as a vegetarian. (I was a vegetarian for a year, but then I incorporated salmon and here we are). Hell, next thing you know I’ll be calling myself straight edge when I’m drinking more than just coffee.

    Perhaps all of this newfound information invalidates me. It may make me seem less productive than the greater American population. But in a sense, truth is freedom, and if I am being honest with myself, it is in a way a greater liberty. (remember that now)

    And who am I to care so much about people other than myself? Let me rejoice in my own life. And if I’d like to be a sober celibate vegan because the corporate government has instilled in me that it is going to make me live longer, perpetuate lies of romance, and doing well all in the name of Religion and enslavement, then I shall.

    Freedom of choice is a very scary concept when we are very unaware to the extent that our rights and our conception reality is being altered or oppressed.

    Even now, as I write this, it is prone to be edited, and made damn sure not to be read by a greater public/you until it is thoroughly reviewed and censored.

    I am afraid to write this next sentence, because the confession of my thoughts may further affirm deeper fears/desires I may harbor, which can be used against me by anyone “I do not know.” (Cyber hackers, an old roommate, Government Agencies, Academic Institutions, Media Outlets, Bourgeois families).

    I feel like I am in an outside prison. I feel like what I do is already known and then determined without much choice on my part. I am not oblivious to extraordinary extent that technology, surveillance, and media influence can infiltrate my inner sanctum and consciousness, not to mention other’s. It is very invasive and unethical. I’m not speaking in theory. I’m speaking from firsthand experience that much of what I find online is targeted to me and builds a very tragic, isolating narrative, and therefore I become very…dilapidated. I’m not only speaking of online interaction either, but that is where it is most evident.

    Gaslighting is a term that refers to when a person makes someone question their reality – usually by means of social media.

    I write all of this to admit that I know all of this sounds very invalidating of my credibility. And I can admit that maybe I am wrong. Maybe I’m a paranoid schizophrenic (who has never been diagnosed of such atrocities, but just you wait). Maybe I’m wrong and this reality really is just a heartwarming experience where American’s rape people into a false belief systems. They took away the freedom to choose, so I might not be wrong.

    As a writer you have to have the courage to write what you believe even if it doesn’t sound right, or even it won’t be understood at the time it is written. You should be able to convey your ideas in a way that can appeal, convey and convince your ideas well. And finally, you should be able to accept that your beliefs may change. It is important to know how and why they change. For better or for worse, and for whom?

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.