Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • Monday Night Poetry #9

    I still see your face when I look in the mirror

    I still laugh alone

    my bones are cold

    and getting older

    the mid-twenties are a waiting game

    looking for a savior

    to change my behavior

    I’m too close to thirty to relax

    I survive off of salami sandwhiches

    and black and white television

    I watch reruns of the news

    and listen to country music and blues

    Willie Nelson is my alarm clock

    KILL ME I cry a little too often

    I proclaim it is a sign of learning

    I don’t know how the days slip through my fingers

    like spilled milk and butterflies

    I gave up looking for you

    I think you will find me if you want to

    My charms work well on virgins

    but hell will be uncomfortable, I’m certain

    tired and useless I use my heroin

    it makes me sharp as a butterknife

    that I use to cut my bread

    I have walked through generations unsuspected

    I have read my own words from the 1800s

    I was scared out of town

    6’10 with an old friend who burned incense in the bathroom

    I stole cookies to feed my ego

    and I still haven’t let go of a growing weight problem

    I am the tiniest man I have ever met

    I play cards with a cricket on Sunday afternoons

    so no harm done

    or maybe it just hurts a little too much

    to stand up on my stool

    brush my teeth

    comb my hair that I am losing along with my mind

    and look at you

    old ocean lighthouse

    -B.B

    I still l

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  • ubiquitous

    I hope to be the main character of my life.

    I have changed my opinion of the telephone. Thank you, Thomas.

    Well, a little good news for once. I am wasting a little extra time because I have lost my love for the butterfly keyboard on Macintosh 13 inch laptops from 2017. It really is terrible. Instead, I am writing this on a Remington typewriter, and retyping my tangents for the internet. It just gets me away from the chore that it has become to write. It isn’t the writing or the audience. I am very grateful for every word you digest. It is the redundancy and mundaneness of technology. There is no soul behind a computer. I want to write like I want to play jazz. This typewriter feels like little orgasms at the end of my fingertips, and the ding at the end of each line sounds like music to my ears. We must strive to make what we do enjoyable. If I hated every time that I sat down at my computer to write (which for the past week, I’ll admit, I have), I think you would begin to notice. John Grisham (who I am currently reading) gave some advice on using a typewriter. He says that it helps the writer slow down (which if you saw the speed and misspellings on the original draft you’d holler) and formulate his thoughts and not rely on the delete key. I am somewhat unfiltered, but if I don’t have the option to edit my stream of consciousness, then perhaps you are getting the real me. I warn you, I am not perfect. If it wasn’t for having bipolar depression and acute addictive personalities (I can’t even shower without staying in too long and turning into a prune), I might be a suitable stand-up guy. Be warned. GO BACK NOW. I don’t think there is such thing as a gentleman. Perhaps there are a few good men, but a gentle man has she/her pronouns. I told you! I write just enough shit to get me in trouble. I love everybody differently. Personally, I will keep my judgment calls under wraps but I will say that men, as in boys….have detracted from more reasonable causes like, dare I say, women’s rights. Don’t quote me on that. I wouldn’t wish to be born the wrong gender on my worst enemy. And there is a valid struggle for young men who identify as women. I just think it might be harder to be born a woman. I don’t know. I should ask someone about this. We can learn a lot from learning. Listen, don’t listen to me. I have balls. The rest of me is proportionate but tiny. Tiny fingers. Tiny brain. I just have a very long attention span. It can go on forever and ever, all while being dangerously distracted. Just now, I got up to look for my noise cancellers. I am like a moth drawn to the flame. I will burn in hell.

    The good news…I was selected to serve on the committee of Harold Washington’s literary magazine.

    Instagram: Bencbon

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  • u

    So silent and tired. Tried and true. I do this for you. My hair smells like roses. I don’t want to kill my love for writing or my will to get up in the morning. But every day, I write more than I’d like and get out of bed before I’m finished sleeping. I’d hope that by doing more of the fundamental refinements of life (exercise, meditation, reading) I’d find more time. It is surprising how much time it takes to discipline yourself. A year, minimum. I am a completely different person than I was a year ago. I probably would have accepted something I didn’t order. I had no idea the direction I wanted to go. I still don’t, but I’m doing what I’ve always wanted. It is exhausting and exhilarating. I finally know the fundamentals of a story. I suggest more people find the courage to believe in themselves. It takes a village. Hopefully, I write a damn short story before the end of the month. I focus too much on just saying what is on my mind. It is, a fundamental refinement. I am trying to be the hero of my story. I don’t know who the villains are, yet. But I used to identify as two people. My alter ego being the cause of my downfall and the reason I’ve only written tragedies thus far. My life is a confusing story. If you stick around, I promise to be open about it. Not the day to day. But the 23 years that made me a failure with self-respect. I hope that words would just appear on some endless scroll, forever being recycled by the next young minds of generations to come. I will die someday. And someday that will be all I’ve written. I don’t suppose it is healthy to judge life on how much you wrote, because the sentence will surely end. Then what? Maybe that’s where it starts.

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  • Monday Night Poetry #8

    Tonight’s Poetry is Compliments of my sister

    I’m winning

    The game

    Is it true , though?

    For I must be named

    King of all the shows

    OF ALL THE COMPETITION

    is it true when you know there is a secret

    Of all the games

    And that is submission

    You pay them off

    One by one they’ll surrender

    They won’t

    Since you are the king

    Of them all

    The one who controls

    The queen of the ball

    The one who betrothed

    You, treat yourself

    When you collect your winnings

    Not with glory of winning

    But with, I’m trying to think of a dessert that rhymes with that

    -No you fucked it up, it’s over

    pop pop

    Goes the little wee wee clock

    It’s almost curfew

    You gotta be inside soon

    If you hold up a finger

    If you walk a couple steps

    You will be scolded

    For he will be upset

    If you look outside the window

    It’s hot and sunny out there

    You see the hose was left on

    It’s bright yellow and red

    Blowing in air

    You think it wouldn’t hurt

    You think god would oblige

    For life is too short

    To not suck it up and go for a ride

    You slowly open the window

    You don’t want mama to hear

    And you run to the toy

    And you run for it from there!

    Slide down it

    You’re wet and your laughing

    And mama comes out and mama says

    Sonny, you were supposed to inside

    You keep on sliding

    You ignore grandmama

    You say life is too short

    For Synagogue

    -M.B

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  • The Rum Diary – Book Review / Synopsis

    The Rum Diary is technically Hunter S. Thompson’s first novel, and technically the first of his books that I have read (I listened to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas on audiobook). He wrote the first draft at the age of 22 while he was a journalist reporting on bowling alleys in Puerto Rico. It is not a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, but I did find it rather enjoyable. Thompson’s iconic language is intoxicating and I felt a little hung-over after reading it. It is relatively subdued compared to some of the drug-crazed Gonzo journalism Thompson would write later in his career, but I hope there is more of writing of his in this same vein. It was articulate instead of nerve-racking which I think he leaned on when his persona became bigger than life.

    If you want to be a writer or are looking for inspiration, this book will empower you to follow your dreams. A topic in the book is aging, and the then 22 Thompson writes, “There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I’d finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn’t feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detached.” The protagonist speaking here, Paul Kemp, is thirty. It makes me wonder if the quarter-life-crisis has been around longer than I’d known. Still, it is a rather mature concept for Thompson to be grappling writing about so young. A flaw in the story is Paul Kemp is a rather static character. He does not grow or change over the story. That does not take away from the tale. Not a lot happens, but the little things, the changes in the routines of the characters drinking all night and going to work at the paper at noon, are relishing. Hunter is very witty, sarcastic, can make you feel like a rotten punk bastard. Many of the characters are flat, unmemorable and start with the letter S for some reason (making it confusing to the reader). It gives me hope in some odd way that I can’t explain. Like it is telling me to go out and chase the world.

    Synopsis:

    The story starts out with Paul Kemp bound for San Juan when he sees a beautiful girl boarding his same plane. He tries to get her attention but ends up looking foolish. When he arrives, he goes to San Juan Daily News where he is planned to work for the next few months. He meets a photographer named Sala who takes him to Al’s where they drink. Sala introduces him to Yeamon who Sala warns is a little volatile. Paul realizes the Yeamon is with the girl that he saw on the plane. Her name is Chenault.

    It soon becomes apparent that the paper is not properly run and there are rumors that it might fold. Yeamon was working on an article for the paper that came out to twenty-something pages that is useless to the paper so he is fired. Paul and Sala visit Yeamon and Chenault to see how they are holding up without an income. They witness Yeamon slap Chenault because she is too drunk and he locks her in his hut while the boys go out for drinks. They get arrested for not paying a bar tab and are thrown in jail. Bail is a thousand dollars for Sala and Yeamon each, but only three hundred for Paul. The paper covers the bail even though Yeamon doesn’t work there anymore.

    To make up for the bail, Paul takes on a few more writing assignments. He goes to a carnival in St. Thomas with Yeamon and Chenualt. They have a good drunken time the first night but on the second night things get out of control. They go to a party which ends up with Chenualt getting entirely naked while she dances. Paul and Yeamon are thrown out of the party and lose her. They go to the police the next day, worried that she has been raped, but give up and go back to San Juan. She shows up at Paul’s door the following day.

    Paul and her start a short-lived affair. Yeamon find out. Then the paper folds. Chenault leaves Kemp to go to New York. Yeamon ends up in a fight with the owner of the paper that gives the owner a heart attack. Since they are out on bail and risk being thrown in jail again, they flee. Paul plans to go to New York to follow Chenualt.

    Another reservation is that at the end, everything happens so abruptly and then is over. It is technically the climax, but it could have been expanded upon. All in all, a good beach read.

    78/100

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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.