Ben Bonkoske

Poet Without a Pen

Ben Bonkoske

  • try a little, lose a little

    Warning: self-proclaimed genuis goes a rye.

    I would do anything these days for that headline. I’ve done enough reading up on Cervantes to know to reclude into a quiet life of sanity will be the death of me. But madness has taken 7 of this cat-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-track’s 9 lives. I remember (like my oddly specific memory always seems to be able to pluck from it’s overcooked turkey of a brain)…I forgot. Aries mate for life. I remember every drunken night. Sometimes I wish I could not have it balking back at me. Sometimes a smile that comes from a wonderful life filled with exceptional people and remarkable stories sneaks up and tickles the hairs on my neck. I’d be very happy to get to spend a life dedicated to art, but sadly, there is nothing more tragic. I feel bad for celebrated actors who still are on television. Writers waiting to die, their best work (in measurement of passion) behind them. I think it is a bad signature when people care more about what they will leave behind rather than what they have left. It all will drown me like a tsunami. I’ve read twenty-two books this year and I am trying really hard to convince myself it’s not out of spite. I don’t have enough people in my life to spite, but there are a few who deserve fame more than me. I hope I can remain successful in obscurity. Not intentionally, but I don’t want to sour the mood of everyone who saw me awkwardly grow up and fit into my oversized wardrobe from high school learning I outbid them at a penny auction. Talk is cheap. Words these days is even cheaper. I love to read the same way I love to run. It gives me a sense of relief once I’ve done it. It is meditative. Occasionally I look forward to it as a substitute for a pack of cigarettes. I still look for clues in my everyday life that there is mysticism to everything. Occasionally I can break through the surface, but it is always a friendly reminder from the equivalent of a skeleton with train tracks for a smile, that the universe is not always safe or comforting. If life wasn’t a little bit dangerous, I know I’d get bored to death very quickly.

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  • Young love

    I’m happy we never grew old together

    That our love was always eagerly awaiting

    the next kiss. An early morning embrace.

    Our souls wandered in wonder

    as they learned to walk, in synch or not,

    there was always a lot to talk about.

    I’m happy we never grew old together

    But we never loved quite long enough.

    -B.B

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  • trust

    If I fell, would you catch me? I should know how to stand on my own two feet by now. A part of me might prefer to just break my neck. I broke my neck trying to convince you I was a catch. Love is abusive. It just feels like a bully that won’t give me my lunch money. I am defenseless to its peril. I can’t tell if I’m getting more rigid or careless. If we are talking in a matter of one week, I am a rubber band, hours, an icicle, a year, a firm butt. It really isn’t so fun being beautiful with no one to share it with, so how do you think this mutt feels? If I can go one day without a hundred oreos maybe I will have grown a good inch in containment. Is life just one long race that doesn’t have a winner? So many amazing people and stories and I think I’m better than every one of them writing in a concrete basement. If you can’t tell, I’m very insecure. I’m also a self-diagnosed narcissist even though I am the most sentimental and occasionally generous person who is broke. Without the rush of hitting the reset button under a lukewarm waterfall, I am so much less fun company. Thank me later I said. Imagine the love letters I would write these days. I might be too occupied with my own life to bring someone into it, but hopefully, it wouldn’t be the shallow “i love yous” that infected my stupid youth. I saw a picture of me on drugs in my first year of college. I was a little tooth pick. Center of attention. It’s all drugs. Television. Music. Reading is the hardest drug. I don’t pass out from fatigue during my days anymore. Good health is hell. A runner’s high. It would be a nasty come down.

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  • Type Your Title Here

    Do you ever get the feeling you live at the bottom of the ocean? I feel the world swirl around me and the tides raise my anxiety even as I get closer and closer to achieving internal stillness. I swim until my fingers have deoxygenated and frizzled down to veiny earthworms. My cold showers have ceased if you don’t notice a difference. I’ve had two, luxurious, long orgasmic hot showers today and yesterday. I replaced my new dopamine rush with twenty-minute meditation intervals. It helps silence the sea while I read. I suppose when you go so long without, you remember how wonderful it is to have. Especially orgasms. But If I had decided between orgasms, hot showers, and sugar. The order would go hot showers, sugar orgasms. It would also rotate every month. Everybody thinks they are good, noble artists. But there are only so many places at the top. I am a bottom feeder. But! We must remember to believe in our imagination’s insanity. I would cease to exist if I didn’t have this lonely affair of sharing my intimate self-neglect. I’m getting on with it. I counted all my cuts and scars today. You’ll just have to see me naked to know the number. I sometimes wish that humans were more like bears and we hibernated from Thanksgiving until Valentine’s day. It would be a good exchange for siestas. Just a three month long nap. I used to have violent yawns. And I look forward to nothing more than a good head rush. To be taken out of reality is a rare excitement that I invite. I love getting high on my own supply. My mental capacities expand like a rubber band and I die a little inside. It is a daunting thought to think I am going to be present for the next hundred years without any intermission. We probably sleep more than three months out of the year. Goodbye little lovebirds. I’ll see you in the spring. I’ll be sleeping, snoring, and dreaming of all that is coming. A lucky lucky little ugly lady that might be willing to sit through this deplorable play while I whisper in her ear the whole time. I want to write a long poem that will serve as my review for life. The title will be Fast Food Service and be about outer space. We all long to be in the stars, looking from the bottom of another abyss.

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  • The Temptations

    The falling snow is a good excuse not to run today. I’ve earned a day off after stuffing my gullet. Looking back (on the morning rain), I’m glad my parents never budged on allowing any form of inebriation in their household. I hold nothing against parents who did, but the thrill of sneaking around to get away with something you know you shouldn’t is truly a fond memory when I think of growing up. I don’t miss the arguments that I got in when I got caught. I’m still not that far away from taking a brisk walk, bumming a cigarette and jumping into a hot shampoo shower so a hunting dog wouldn’t suspect a thing. I’m learning and growing older. Because of these old rules I can abide by them on my own accord nowadays. I am on the brink of an application to a very competitive MFA program so pray for me. I don’t necessarily believe praying changes the outcomes of things, but prayer changes the person who prays to be a better person I think. I’m always surprised after I get two or three sentences rolling that I’m much more willing to share the depths of my desires and fears with my lovelies. There always seems to be someone awake in the attic of my very noisy head. I have very low expectations but I also believe in miracles. Miracles are handed out to those who dare to go and get it. I’m am very afraid of rejection (I just don’t know it yet). A comedian I respect talked about what he would do differently if he was my age. He responded, “ask her out”. Take the risk. Approach the things you are scared of. And if it wasn’t for my father’s rigorous rules but empathetic turn around, I would never have the courage to try and pull off a Ocean’s Eleven heist. The Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop. There. I said it. Now the whole world can celebrate when I lose. I’ve said it before, I am a very lucky loser. Of course this year has been bad. And things can always get a lot worse. But it takes so much more strength and effort to remember the good things that happened instead of everything that went awry.

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.