Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • can’t a berry tale

    Gosh darn Jesus, it is difficult that after such a wonderful night with long-loved friends and overdue laughter and dancing like a flame that I always go home so melancholy.

    Jed was playing tonight. He knows to be humble, but it is so difficult to watch at the same time. He could be so big. If only that was what we didn’t want.

    “I saw someone in the room, but I heard someone else.” I couldn’t close my eyes to all the symbols, and questions, and integral egoism. I really am saddened by the idea of never escaping my reality. I’d like to let it go! I want to! Show me how. I really wouldn’t like to be me. But there are good times, and such incredible conclusions occasionally. The best are just the jokes.

    I still dance : ) I deserve a cigarette : ( I tried to solve the world’s problems -_- The flowers were called mums tonight.

    I want love (an oxymoron). Too little to ask of the world. It’s not all anything. It’s always everything. You can not escape yourself, but you can screw yourself by doing the opposite. About a girl; Tradition sucks. If I’m over here trying to reverse greek mythology, maybe I deserve a call. And maybe she can drive.

    Sometimes when life looks back at you in its beautiful moments, all you can think is, “What another great way to end.” And then I jumped in the water naked, by myself.

  • different shirt, same year

    I tell myself, and I’d be happy to tell others, that if you want to be a successful writer, just keep writing (insert synonym for writing – just keep “swimming”). Just don’t stop what you are doing. I write, here tonight, to say, that I will likely be meeting a self-imposed deadline for my next book. It is titled Ten Zen by Ben.

    10/10/23 seems like a better deadline for the project than my preferred date, but, I will say, that some numerical values are a bit more arcane (Ask the Mathletes). But this book, and this deadline, are not what I am truly trying to focus on. Writing it kept me in a state of limbo.

    Right before I deleted my Instagram, I posted something that said, “I guess the truth comes out when you are being honest.” And then I disappeared. I live in a world of fear. I fear God, I fear love, I fear my dad, I fear my ex-girlfriend, but most importantly I fear myself. I fear what I have to say. And with that fear, comes the belief that I must hide. I must not show my true colors to the world, because I have fear that I am some bad person who doesn’t deserve to be who I am. I fear it is wrong to be somebody.

    (And so, I run, and hide away, for my long intervals of life. I am quiet for a long time. Working silently, quietly. Head down and humble. Then I show up expecting that the world is not to have changed. But let’s hope this is not a blog post embodiment of some guy saying “I’m back.” I’m not really. And well, a part of me never left, but another part of me is gone I suppose. But losing yourself isn’t the point. One point is that it is important to know who you are, and you are more likely to discover this by looking inward than relying on outward expectations from others.)

    But my initial point is this, I don’t know why I have so much to hide. I don’t know why I’d be so ashamed with the idea of saying that I wrote another book. Maybe I think it adds value. Maybe I call shame humility. If I have any redeeming quality, it is that I am a generally honest person. “Sometimes too honest.” Welp, yeah maybe I’ve said some dumb thing. Maybe I’ve voiced my opinion about things that aren’t really my business. But I really have to find the strength to say that I am not a bad person, and I can help people with my words.

    1. I don’t work well with others
    2. I have a sailor mouth
    3. I have bad days

    but I’m not a bad person.

    I’d like to be honest and be open about my thoughts. I think that a significant point of progress is that we share ideas. I’m not really banking on my name being the thing that is remembered, but I sure hope my ideas make a difference. It is so much better, as a writer, to have conflict and an inner dialogue, than to get everything done with everyone on time. It’s not bad to do both. I hope I find a way that it doesn’t hurt anyone to speak (you and myself both included), and say something worth exclaiming. And let’s pray we write another book.

  • the caterpillar continues

    My nervous system is a beautiful thing, but I don’t think about dancing the way I used to.

    I thought of my step-brother a few days ago, but it was really just thinking about myself and how I used to be like. I’d tell him, “I liked who I was. Remember who I was?” And he knew me long before anyone else I know. I was always crazy, and fun, and wild. I was. Maybe even somebody reading thing knew me when I was like that. But then I’d tell him, “You know, I know I changed. Something happened. I remember when. And I changed. And I just want you to know, I know I changed, and I’m not exactly happy about who I became either. I am who I am, and this is who I became, and what a fun little know-it-all asshole I was. I wish I was still him too, but this is who I am now.”

    I’m not in the mood lately to whimper about not being liked. I’m nice to all the people nobody else likes, that’s why I’m not liked I tell myself. Maybe I am a good person. I feel terrible. I’m still just a runner, among other derogatory terms for a man. I recall a week before another bad thing happened, I wanted to tell one of the few men I know who I have some respect for that “I’m not going to make it.” I knew that I was not strong enough, God aside. I am not weak, but I can’t fight everything, and always win. Some feelings hurt worse when you can’t give up. But because the man was a part of something bigger than myself, I knew the truth.

  • Nick Offerman is to be nominated for awards for his portrayal of dystopian Ernest Hemingway

    Silent September was almost a success. My initial goal was to just not listen to Spotify. I’m listening to it now on the other side of a month of quietude. One of my worst issues is just making bigger and better expectations of myself. I keep running past the endzone. I only mention that character trait, because on September 29th, I looked up, “jake paul song that was sad.” I found it, and that night I listened to the first minute of it on Youtube. The moral is, no matter how stoic we centennials try to be, there is always some soft-hearted cyber trash in us all. October 1st was beautiful, and there is a sadness to beauty.

    Is there a beauty to sadness? I sure thought there was. And maybe there is a beauty to silence. Certainly. Music makes life beautiful too. Music can be beautiful because it feels understood and felt together. Music can also be beautiful because it understands us without asking us any questions. It is felt. Sometimes together. Sometimes in solitude, but even then, there is someone else we are feeling. (ROBOTIC GENERATED MUSIC ASIDE. POWER TO THE MACHINES. SPONSORED BY ALEXA) But sadness is beautiful perhaps because we think we feel it alone, and the worst part is, we usually feel it for someone else. Strange how funny you can be, and within less than a second a versatility of emotions.

    A couple of last minute things. I realized I haven’t gone on a vacation, as in left Chicago, for more than three days in just under two years (Christmas doesn’t count). 600ish days. I was starting The Master program last time I went to Asheville. I’m Up In Michigan tonight on business. Look at my Big World. Apart from having a lot of conversations with those cityfolk animals – verbal exchanges usually for food, but still, pretty interesting. What a headache. I am a relatively modest city mouse. It really confuses people. Being intriguing is an innuendo. But as much as I like to pretend to say I’m all humble, I really do wish I could just live in a nice forest. I scared the hell out of more than just the animals when I arrived. Not a minute to waste. My dads and I watched Episode 3 of The Last of Us. They happened to be on it. I happened to be here for it. 120 minutes. Two hours. That’s a long time.

  • 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.

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.