The Show's On, a poem by Pranab Ghosh at Spillwords.com

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The Show’s On

Pranab Ghosh·July 25, 2025

Poetry English

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The Show’s On

written by: Pranab Ghosh

Cha…
Coffee…
Lemon tea…
‘Dhud cha’*…

Darkness around drowns
In words, memories,
Soft whispers of
Discontented lovers

Words halt, refuse to serve.
I force my ink
Into an unpaid labor.
‘Strike’ had been the narrative…
All through yesterday
Hangover refuses to leave

This evening I am alone
Sitting in front of a sales woman
Peddling framed dreams
A shared memory…
Deluge submerges, but
I refuse to be swept away

Alone, I walk away
From my dreams
From words, forced and unforced
From emotions, throttled
By time, administration
And
You
You

You all!

I beseech you
You all to act

Now!
Now!
Now!

Before all our ‘dreams’
Get stollen,
Shattered
For
Ever!

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

* These are Bengali/Hindi words, which mean ‘Milk tea.’

This poem was written on July 10, 2025, a day after most of the political parties – Left and left-to-the-center – joined hands to support a nationwide strike called by various workers’ and farmers’ unions, here in India.

About
Latest Posts

Pranab Ghosh

Pranab Ghosh is a journalist, writer, poet, translator and blogger. He runs a blog “Existential Problems.” His poems and prose pieces have been published and accepted by Dissident Voice, Spillwords, The Piker Press, Setu Magazine, Pangolin Review, Visual Verse, Memoryhouse Tuck Magazine, Transendent Zero Press, Scarlet Leaf Review, Literature Studio Review, Leaves of Ink, Hans India, etc. He has coauthored a book of poems, titled Air & Age. He has to his credit a translation of a book of Bengali short stories. The title of the English translation is “Bougainvillea and Other Stories”. His second book of poems and first solo book, “Soul Searching and Other Poems” (2017), has been published by Scarlet Leaf Publishing, Toronto. His second collection of poems, “Vision of the World and Other Poems”, has been published by Impspired in November 2020.

Jim Bartlett

After a long career tinkering in telecommunications, Jim Bartlett switched to tinkering with writing fiction, both requiring a stretch of the imagination. In the course of putting his fingers to the keyboard, he's been fortunate to have quite a number of his stories featured both in print and online in several wonderful publications, including a story selected for "The Best of Fiction on the Web, 1996 – 2017" anthology. While mentally he strolls along a warm California beach with his wife and golden retriever (shhh, she doesn't know she's a dog), physically they reside on a special little island in the Pacific Northwest.

Reaper by Sharon Frame Gay

As an orphaned son of an orphan, I always see the glass as half empty. I picture the water murky and lukewarm, a waterline etched below the rim. Maybe with an ash or two floating at the bottom, because that’s what I do for a living. I deal with ashes. The remains of the deceased. No matter how those who pass away see their glass, meager or full, they eventually end up in a satchel carried on my shoulder.
My business card reads “Morton Stark Transport.” I’m called upon to disperse the ashes of the dearly departed and honor their final wishes. People hire me to escort the remains throughout the world ...

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