A World Without Shame

unfiltered poetry; my published books are at inkwhisper.gumroad.com

A happy poem?
No.
Not happening.

The brain won’t lie.
My fingers won’t fake it.
Paper spits it back
when it smells like pretending.

It’s not about joy.
Joy’s been chewed to pulp,
sold a thousand times in pretty colors
to people too scared to bleed for real.

I can’t write praise
with a gut that still
tightens at night,
remembering the hunger
of a winter kitchen,
empty jars,
my mother’s hands
counting shadows of bread.

I can’t smile
in a world
where my name
is a rented key,
unlocked only
when I’m a tool
in someone else’s story.

I hate them.
Those grinning masks,
kissing their own reflections,
lying just enough
to make their lives look whole.
Painted misery is still a misery.

I can’t write peace.
Every day
feels like war.
No banners, no sides,
just blood I hide
under clean shirts,
stains my shadow can’t forget.

But if I forced it,
if I wrote some fake dawn,
it’d be a lie
etched over
the last honest shard
of the man I still wake as.

So I’ll write this instead:
a world without shame
is a world I’ll never see.
I’ll claw through the dark
with these cracked hands,
until the dirt tastes like truth.