Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • Just lust; And the circumventing of my childhood

    Something notable about Charles – and I kinda try not to be too much of a cliché, but am – is that he gave his chapter’s good titles. So I will add an addition onto my first-thought-title (a rhyme and exhale, rather than a notion of judicious lust); I have done what I set out to do just now.

    “I will start” (after nibbling on my lemon cake, and taking a gulp of some stinky milk) to say that I underwent a purge of grief recently. It is my job to find the right, or best words to convey what occurs, and is imagined. It took the form of wailing while reading poetry. It felt like someone reaching down my throat and pulling out a fish. Then cooking the fish, but not eating it, out of mercy.

    I let go of a lot of pain I’d been holding onto for too long to know how long. I am re-adjusting to this release. However, I recognize how distraught I’ve been for the past long while. It is very sad to think of an animal in pain, unsure what to do for it. I don’t feel as hurt and heavy. Hopefully, I am less prone to probe myself, and others, and by doing so, hurt them.

    How can you know? Such a wise thing to suggest of yourself, no?

    Well, I don’t know for certain what tomorrow will take, but I told my quack, well, it has been good to read Junie B. Jones and now with my five-year-old brain and conception of the world and literature, let us begin Anna Karenina on the bus. 

    It’s just a metaphor (based on his experience convoluted with mine) which is not always the best absolute explanation of everything. 

    Brief note: I’m starting to learn a little more about grammar. I am making sure to pay attention to using the same tense in the same sentence. Although, there is some untraditional part of me which wants to use both present and past tense in the same sentence, as though something can be happening while something else has already happened – it would just be very bold for a self-published author to do. But that previous paragraph is an interesting example. 

    Words are like math. And commas and punctuation are like arithmetic. Been trying to make everything perfect until it all turns to mulch. Aries Full Moon. No Pizza. The city out. Living to love, loving to die. September is a strange month to extrapolate my life online.

  • Expensive Gatorade

    Up at the crack of dawn to do my due diligence and be as healthy as humanly possible, kinda makes writing at this hour a little less compelling. Maybe it’d be best to start blogging earlier in the day. There is a dream of mine to have every minute accounted for – which I have been able to do to a certain extent for the past sixish months, but let’s just just recognize that I do (am doing) what I love, and I love to do it, and even if it is rubbish, it is time well spent.

    There are a couple of approaches for how to blog. Yes, there is the Dear Diary method, which can be very intriguing to many readers. Many people want to hear about all of the deep dark secrets a person is willing to purge on the internet. It is a kick! Although I have all kinds of realizations and revelations of my personal relationships, still to this day – but of which I have determined to try my best to just “kinda” keep private (unless asked by said persons). And my own exasperations, flaws, indiscretions, and shadows which may be explored here if I get bored enough. However, if I am to not explore my past relationships nor complaints, what the hell else is there left to write about?

    Is it love? Is it still that four letter word that is all there is to life? I think the most interesting revelation I have had as of late is that I just am not really in love with the world right now. Everything I’ve ever made or done has come from such a place of love for so long, but now, ya know, I sing a song, or write a story, but feel like stimulus without an origin or receiver. I think the Goddess exists. Oh yeah, God, the three letter word. And don’t forget the five letter word Peace. I am God, Love, Peace. 1 2 3 4 5

    I, can direct my love into a vessel, and the whole world can tell you that is wrong, but at some point, it starts to feel vague. It isn’t necessarily bland but it is detached. Maybe I am meant to just be a meaningless expression. Absurd. It doesn’t feel like the passionate overwhelming affair that it always was. I’m not empty. I’m not unhappy either. I’m not a lot of things I think I am. But for so long everything was directed to someone, something, it all had a person or God-like conversation I was trying to give my life and art and emotion to, but, today and maybe this happens to a lot of people when they are twenty-five, I’m relieved to sing for no sentiment.

  • Monday Poetry 9/25/23

    chitter chitter chatter

    away..

    sayings staying

    all the same…

    different today

    not the season

    not anything in

    particular

    a stranger

    waiting to know

    someone unknown

    please

    and thanks

    -B.B

    The grey crow

    knowing all knowlege asked

    of us young winged serpents

    no longer from spring

    some heads are cut off

    one of us is still running around

    trying to hold onto his oxygen

    while splattering paint of the pavement

    another flew the coo

    the rest nesting

    Los Angeles

    and the writer

    waiting for New York to visit

    -B.B

  • fifty-two week post notes

    I tried to love her when I was with her and I loved her after. I wanted to love her. I didn’t know how to love. Whatever may have happened, I was wrong. I was the one who was wrong. I tell myself she deserves an apology I can’t give her which is not true. I tell myself that I needed her, which is true. I associate her with my favorite painter, brokenhearted folk music, and simple language. I feel bad that I took out good memories from my playlist and blog. I’m happy to have cried for her. My laugh sounds like her’s sometimes. I learned to get up early from her father; Sometimes people are too nice. I don’t disrespect her.

  • farewell, from Algonquin

    Maybe we are waiting to die. I go to a lot more funerals than weddings. Or rather, I’ve gone to more funerals than weddings. It is a fine line of wanting to be well dressed for the person you cared about, and bordering on being the best dressed. I really try to put everything aside at a funeral (the funeral is tomorrow), but a ceremony (which, shouldn’t I have known, was the night to wear black, or a cubs jersey) and just be as human as possible. Hug the mother. Be thankful for life. Grieve. Laugh. And sometimes, it ends with just getting the hell out of there. Tipping your hat to the man, leaving the money, and saying good bye.

    And then there is the funeral tomorrow. I recall, gosh, it really must’ve been several years ago now, when I had enough cash on hand to buy a car, that I was writing something like this. I was with two Aries. And tonight I drove with a Leo and a Sagittarius. (And in the past) we listened to Billy Joel in the car, and the memory I shared with the kid who is dead was about listening to Billy Joel. Sounds pretty, um uncoincidental, but these intersections of lives, are many years apart, but are in my little sponge just waiting to be reflected on. Certainly not unique with a musician like that, but all the more meaningful.

    I also don’t find it odd, to be hopeful that this kid is lucky to be on the other side, and I really hope that I get to see him when I get there. This is this side. And maybe like life, death is better when you are young.

    I feel like a coward. I really think there have been opportune moments to exit which I couldn’t muster up the courage to do so. I don’t know if you call it a regret. You’d certainly call it getting older. And getting older isn’t all good. You see more.

    God, and writing. I’m in good shape. I just also make excuses, like people dying. Maybe we are waiting to die.

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.