Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • letters to remember

    I had some heroic explanation waiting for me. A squiggly smile. I was feeling awfully good for some reason. And I felt awfully bad today too. Really not on top of anything. You think you are past this. You walk around just a bit too wise, and then reap a nice sow of another nothing much kind of couple of years.

    I got an email from a kid I student taught today. Didn’t really have the energy to write him back. He said he was sorry the job didn’t work out but knew I’d find a good school. He thanked me for what I did. Those kids were so great and I had the time of my life. I slept under the desk though. And thought I was best-dressed. Next thing you know, you throw out your whole closet by accident.

    Here is the letter:

    Hi Ben!

    I hope you are doing well. It’s Conor, from your 8th-period English class last semester at ETHS. I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading your book. Your writing style made connecting with the main character, Jack, feel so natural. I’m looking forward to reading any future books you write!

    I know you weren’t able to find a continuing position at ETHS, but I hope that you were able to find another school that values your teaching just as much as I know our class did.

    Best,
    Conor

    Here is what I just wrote back:

    Hey Conor! 

    Thank you so much! This means so much to me. I am finishing a collection of short stories and I will let you know when it is finished. Keep Reading. It will open a world of thought and understanding of human emotion that is a vital component for love, and world and inner peace. I hope that you continue to search for things that interest you. Find what you are looking for, not what everyone else thinks they’ve found. 

    Be smart, prudent, and stay young at heart,

    Mr. Bon

    I just recall telling the guy who was in my corner at the ol’ castle, “Do you have any idea how many of my hopes and dreams have been crushed?” or shattered. When, you know, again, nothing works out. I don’t just sit in my pity party. I really really really really just try to figure stuff out. I just can’t always make sense of everything. It shouldn’t be my fault, and I feel blamed.

    Perhaps a macabre example, but there was a holocaust survivor, a lawyer who lived through the holocaust. And being someone who studied law, and to see it, just so violated, he couldn’t make sense of the aftermath. He didn’t recover, mentally anyways. There always is some sense to be made, but explaining some things of that nature, is actually quite evil and gruesome, and definitely not to be understood by one person, and more so, can’t always be recompensed.

    I think I bring about a certain kind of disgust. I think I bring about a certain kind of hope too. I was on the train talking with a couple of heroin addicts today. I told them they could beat this thing, even though, ya know. They were just people, on their way to the bag, and me on my way to God knows.

    I miss just typing. I just miss typing so bad. In the memoir, in my, head, I wanted to tell a story about how in third grade we played Type to Learn 3. And I cried, because every time I was just about to get to the next level, we’d have to go back from the computer lab. My mom got me Type to Learn 3 from one of those Scholastic Magazines, and I got pretty far. But I still type with about three fingers. And now I write longhand? “Some girls fall in love with bad handwriting.” I once, wrote, or told myself so.

  • Tuesday Poetry 9/19/23

    You looked like a flea

    as free as can’t be

    silly, sincere, stupidity,

    all you appeared

    to be

    to me

    beneath the crustacean incarnation

    was some serious sincerity silliness

    for us all as good as we’re not

    woman or clot in our arm

    is the snickering laughter

    and ignoring of the alarm

    thirty

    year old dirty scum kid,

    forgetmenots and just about to nod off in a suit

    for the blue people

    in their black garb and handcuffs

    puff puff please puff more than enough for

    one

    and she now

    love pity sick hatred

    the poet on his way

    denouncing every deflowering betrayal to the

    ideal of ok

    I liked your poems

    but not enough to stay

    not enough to remain

    without a painkiller

    bitter, sweet words.

    -B.B

  • zap a dos

    My life style seems to change every obvious hour of the day, style doesn’t go out of style, it just looks a little different every time I decide to chive it a chance of free meaning. walks. Somedays smile, delight in displeasure. It is smart of my common sense to say less. King of the questionable to others, but I have some. back to writing, although we know, nothing good will happen. Naturally, years came and went, and off on his chat very well and good minded status, below par? Ask him. It is a gentle terminology, but surely there will be visitation hours. Tiresome to watch.

  • zimbabwe

    I guess, in my haunted room, apart from, those biting gremlins and crawling creepers all over my skin, invoking late-night terror to their delight, as some sort of initiation for rushing into being evil again, which I, more or less, failed, and have, by the goodness of my heart of spades, and the people who seem to care, love (and look after) me, am to return to the blinding bright side of being an upstanding, do-gooder, simpleton.

    Motherfuckers like me, think because they shaved the whole world ended. Autistic as I am, I’d rather be a good person, and look a little silly, than, be clean-shaven LA, fuckin everything up that used to mean something to me. Very Aries.

    “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” – this is the betrayal from a guy who didn’t write very well. Write a second draft my man. I like to think of myself as Jung. Maybe the whole world remembers him in second place because he didn’t just exclaim the first explanation that came to his brain. But more importantly, because he sought the good in people, which is harder, and less glamorous. Freudian explanations for everything, are easy to believe because they are simple, black and white, explanations for everything. They want to make sense because we wish life was that simple.

    And, I must mention, that I wish I were Kafka (Lovecraft). I wish I was deranged, and stoic, and painfully beautifully manipulated and tortured by some inside voice that transcends a man into a God. I’ll just be a Demi someday (Demisexual heyo!) or a Trojan. I’m not sure. I’m enough of a man thus far, I know that much. But I think why I do not wish to be a God, is because being human prolongs hope. I’ve got enough Irish in me to know, eh, you don’t need a lot of hope, just focus on what is in front of you. But, no hope. None. I’m glad to’ve known.

    I betrayed myself, yesterday. Get your head out of your pants you silly little ladies. I just couldn’t look myself in the mirror, and the weight of Nicholas Cage was just a little too heavy. Hopefully, no pictures will be taken until I look the way I am. Silly, unattractive, but someone who believes in something, and that something, is something of good use and purpose. I couldn’t live with myself, for about, a week. That’s why some people don’t drink. But my truth was, that this revelation, liberation, and salvation vacation was due to grieving, through nothing more than Robert Frost’s Poetry. And for a young man like me to have gotten to that kind of poetry, originated from nothing less than doing everything in his will to be a good boy, until his spirit let out a big fart. Sometimes you stink for a little afterword.

  • Monday Night Poetry 8/21/23 Chicago, Il

    There is a change that occurs

    when you get older, you know it

    by seeing yourself in another man’s shoes

    pity, and gratitude

    Tell them it is ok, strange to say

    nobody is going to listen to you

    for their own sake

    I feel for you kid, I really do, but you

    are probably older than me, in your own way

    Tell me, what do I do?

    -B.B

    They break you

    and make you

    into who you don’t want to be

    then you blame yourself for writing

    bad poetry

    -B.B

    It would never be perfect

    if you lived your life as a dic-

    tionary. The words are still here

    you are alive! Child!

    Not seventy; perhaps not twenty-five

    but one year on schedule

    the bus hasn’t left yet

    and there are places to go

    and people to see

    Call it by her name, if that is still what it means

    -B.

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.