Rain has a strange way of making the world feel quieter.
Sometimes that quiet gives the mind room to speak.
And sometimes the mind doesn’t whisper.
Louder Than the Rain is a small piece about one of those moments—when everything outside is making noise, yet somehow the loudest thing in the room is what’s happening inside your own head.
So listen closely.
— Rowan Evans
When the world gets quiet, sometimes the thoughts get louder.
Louder Than the Rain Poetry by Rowan Evans
I sat listening to the rainfall,
watching it hit and splash upon the ground—
the way my tears fell,
I was surrounded, but it felt like nobody was around.
I was alone in a packed house—
why was the silence so fucking…
my thoughts were loud,
they were drowning my thoughts out.
I was so damn nervous,
hands in my hair, I was pulling it—
just wanted to scream and shout,
it was the only way to get my feelings out.
But I couldn’t shout loud, so I rode it out—
translated the pain to the page.
Yeah, I wrote it out…
Journey into the Hexverse
[My Nightmare] A poem about the nightmare of loving someone across distance, seeing the world from different perspectives, and holding onto the hope that the cracks can still be repaired—and that someday two separate shores might become one.
[Nobody² (No Body)] A minimalist poem playing with the double meaning of “nobody”—exploring loneliness, isolation, absence, and the feeling of becoming a ghost within your own life.
[Rose & Ruin] Two minimalist poems exploring the opposing forces within creativity: the thoughts we cultivate into something beautiful and the darker thoughts we transform before they have a chance to decay.
Sometimes I genuinely wonder what happens when I give my brain permission to write whatever it wants.
The answer, apparently, is sandwiches, pasta, farmers on Pluto, raccoons in silk pajamas, llamas, trees, cartoon ghosts, monsters, seven deadly sins, and a journey across an ocean that does not technically exist.
And honestly?
I love it.
Across the Page-cific (Chasing Storms) is a celebration of the strange places my writing can go when I stop trying to force it into a single shape.
This poem deliberately references several of my recent pieces and recurring worlds. The sandwich wordplay comes from Lost in the Sauce. The pasta-based literary assault comes from Impasta (A Diss in Pasta Form). The trees point back to my playful botanical wordplay, while Danny Phantom, the Monster in the Margins, the Seven Deadly Sonnets, ravens, spirits, and other imagery come from the larger mythology and vocabulary I’ve been building throughout my work.
The references aren’t just Easter eggs.
They’re evidence.
Evidence of how much my writing has changed—and how much more willing I am now to let different parts of my voice coexist.
For a long time, I thought I needed to choose what kind of writer I was supposed to be.
Gothic poet.
Confessional poet.
Love poet.
Dark poet.
Funny poet.
Experimental poet.
But the more I write, the less interested I am in choosing.
I want to write the heartbreak poem with sandwich ingredients.
I want Tony Stanza to write a pasta diss.
I want to turn mythology into autobiography.
I want to write about ghosts and gods, then turn around and make a terrible pun.
I want to chase a metaphor until it becomes absurd.
And then, underneath all of it, I want to find something honest.
That is what the storms in this poem represent.
The chaotic lines.
The sudden cadence changes.
The ideas that arrive from nowhere.
The parts of my mind that refuse to walk in a straight line.
I used to think I needed to calm those storms down.
Now?
I chase them.
Because writing has become a playground again.
And somewhere in that playground, I keep finding pieces of myself I hadn’t finished discovering.
“It was writing that saved me” is therefore not a throwaway line.
Writing gave me a language for experiences I couldn’t always explain directly. It gave me somewhere to put the contradictions, the humor, the darkness, the questions, the love, the anger, the absurdity, and everything else that makes up the person behind the pen.
Piece by piece.
Bit by bit.
I rebuilt myself in the art.
And apparently, sometimes that art looks like a sandwich, a bowl of pasta, and a storm on the Pacific.
I’ll take it.
— Rowan Evans
I stopped trying to avoid the storms. I started chasing them across the page.
Across the Page-cific (Chasing Storms) Poetry by Rowan Evans
Let’s see, what other ridiculous thing
can we turn into poetry—
I’ve written a heartbreak poem
using sandwich ingredients,
and wrote a diss poem
using nothing but pasta noodles—
was a farmer on Pluto,
witnessed raccoons in silk pajamas
perched on the backs of llamas—
while I shaped love poems
out of the trees—
I’ve turned Danny Phantom
into religion—a whole faith
on “going ghost”—
but really it’s just me stuck
between worlds.
I’ve written as the monster in the margins
and the spirits in the room—
seven sins that act like tax on the soul.
Go against the monster, you won’t leave whole.
Feeling like Pennywise, grin wide,
’cause I’m a clown in my rhymes
sometimes—
I’ve taken trips
in ink-dipped ships
across the page-cific—
avoiding storms of chaotic lines
and jagged rhymes
with sudden cadence changes.
Just kidding—
I chased the storms across the page,
embraced the pace my brain gave.
It was writing that saved me—
it gave me a way to translate me,
piece by piece and bit by bit,
I rebuilt myself in the art of lit—
where a mind like mine appears rarely.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[Lost in the Sauce] A playful heartbreak poem where sandwiches, ketchup, mustard, rye, lettuce, and sourdough become metaphors for emotional confusion. Beneath the food puns is a speaker trying to understand how everything went from “we’re okay” to suddenly feeling cold.
[Impasta] Tony Stanza is back with another literary attack—and this time, he’s bringing pasta. Spaghetti, fettuccine, macaroni, ravioli, and angel hair become weapons in a ridiculous diss aimed at a poet whose rhymes are allegedly cheesy, fragile, and completely impasta.
[Pluto Farmer] A whimsical absurdist poem about being a certified weirdo, farming space carrots on Pluto, and refusing to fit into anyone else’s definition of “normal.”
[Raccoons in Silk Pajamas] What begins with judgmental Space Chickens quickly spirals into camels in parked cars, elephants in jam jars, raccoons in silk pajamas, and astronauts in the ocean. A playful absurdist poem about language, imagination, and what happens when you stop trying to control where the words go.
[Did You Really Think This Was About Trees?] A playful love poem disguised as a forest of terrible tree puns. Beneath the birch, oak, cedar, palms, lumber, and absurdist wordplay is a poem about devotion, loyalty, laughter, and building a life with someone you love.
[Danny Phantom Theology] What begins as a metaphor borrowed from a childhood cartoon becomes something deeper: a reflection on existing between survival and possibility, exhaustion and hope, the life we have and the life we long for. Danny Phantom Theology explores what it means to keep moving toward a future that feels worth living.
[The Monster in the Margins II] The Monster in the Margins II transforms Rowan Evans’s Seven Deadly Sins mythology into a horror story written between the lines, where Lust, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Pride, Envy, and Gluttony become monsters growing from pain, grudges, and scars.
Some poems don’t need to be abandoned when we outgrow the person who originally wrote them.
Sometimes they need to be revisited.
Undead Symphony (Remix) returns to a poem I originally wrote on June 13, 2024. The original was written from a place I understood intimately: feeling perpetually misplaced, overlooked, and emotionally exhausted while still carrying an enormous capacity for empathy underneath the numbness.
The title came from that contradiction.
An undead thing is neither fully alive nor truly dead. A symphony, meanwhile, is full of movement, emotion, tension, and sound. Put those ideas together and you get something that feels very close to the emotional state I was trying to describe: a person who can feel deeply while simultaneously becoming distant from the world around them.
That contradiction is still here in 2026.
What changed is the way I approach it.
The remix gives the poem more room to breathe. I broke apart lines that had previously been compressed together, allowing certain thoughts to linger rather than rushing past them. I also sharpened some of the imagery and cadence, particularly around the relationship between solitude, apathy, and empathy.
The original poem said what I was feeling.
The remix feels more like I understand why I was saying it.
And that distinction matters.
I have spent a lot of time in my writing exploring darkness—not because darkness is all I have, but because I have always been fascinated by the strange things that can survive inside it. Undead Symphony is one of those pieces.
Apathy and empathy shouldn’t fit together.
Yet somehow, they do.
One protects the heart by making the world feel distant.
The other keeps reaching toward it anyway.
That tension is the symphony.
The speaker may feel undead, but the music never actually stops.
— Rowan Evans
Somewhere between apathy and empathy, something inside me keeps making music.
Undead Symphony (Remix) Poetry by Rowan Evans [written on July 23, 2026]
It was always the wrong place,
wrong time—
I was always second best,
never first place—
Never the one to win the race,
I was always the one they laughed at,
never with—
always the one that
when they were gone—
never missed.
So I grew cold and distant
like far-off summer nights,
yearned for on cold winter mornings.
And sometimes—
it still feels hard to breathe,
like a shadow in the light,
fading beneath.
I never was one for faith,
I never believed,
no thoughts and no prayers—
because why should anybody care?
In a crowd I felt alone,
a silent voice,
an empty phone.
It’s apathy—
and I pair it with my empathy.
An odd dance of light and dark,
within me.
It’s beauty in the darkness,
an undead symphony.
But still—I dream of a place,
where I’m more than just a face.
A spark in the night,
a fleeting glimpse
of warmth in the cold,
and strength in the struggle.
I remember moments—
fleeting and rare,
of laughter shared,
of someone who cared.
Brief as they were,
they lit up my sky,
A reminder that even shadows can try.
Yet—
I return to the solitude I know,
where apathy is my only show.
But my empathy,
a hidden grace—
whispers of a longing for a different place.
It’s a contradiction,
a twisted art—
to feel so much,
with a guarded heart.
An undead symphony,
a haunting tune—
a dance of shadows beneath the moon.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[Fallen Angel’s Reckoning (Remix)] Fallen Angel’s Reckoning (Remix) revisits a 2024 poem about heartbreak, broken promises, and falling from an imagined heaven, transforming its original ending into a darker meditation on resilience, self-reclamation, and learning to fly with broken wings.
Sometimes an old poem doesn’t need to be left in the past.
Sometimes you have to return to it after you’ve changed.
Fallen Angel’s Reckoning (Remix) revisits a poem I originally wrote on June 6, 2024. The original was already telling a story I understood well: love that promised forever, a fall from an imagined heaven, and the painful process of reclaiming yourself after the promise disappears.
But I was a different writer when I wrote it.
And, more importantly, I was a different person.
The 2026 version isn’t meant to erase the original. It is a conversation with it.
I kept the central imagery—the angel, Lucifer, the fall from heaven, the halo, the darkness, the broken vow—because those symbols still belong to the emotional architecture of the piece. But I wanted to push the mythology further this time. Icarus enters the story. The fall becomes more physical, more violent, more deliberate. The speaker isn’t simply descending from something that once felt like heaven; they are plummeting from it.
And then there is the ending.
In 2024, I wrote about newfound wings.
In 2026, I wrote about broken wings.
That change matters to me.
Because strength doesn’t always mean becoming untouched by what happened. Sometimes you keep the scars. Sometimes you keep the broken pieces. Sometimes you discover that you can still fly without first repairing everything that hurt you.
The angel doesn’t become an angel again.
They don’t return to the heaven they lost.
They don’t need the person who made them feel divine to give them their identity back.
They become something else.
A fallen angel who embraces the fallen.
The broken.
The free.
That is what this remix ultimately became: not a poem about getting back what was lost, but about discovering that losing it didn’t mean losing yourself.
I didn’t rewrite the 2024 version because it was wrong.
I rewrote it because I’ve had two more years to understand the fall.
And sometimes the person who wrote the first poem deserves to hear what the person you became has learned since then.
— Rowan Evans
I don’t need unbroken wings to fly. I just need to remember that they were mine before anyone promised me heaven.
Fallen Angel’s Reckoning (Remix) Poetry by Rowan Evans [written July 23th, 2026]
I remember when you said forever,
but forever never came,
so I fell like Lucifer,
from the heavens down I tumbled.
Returned your love,
played your game—
once an angel in your eyes,
now in darkness I crumbled.
Your promises were wings that lifted me high,
but they melted away, when I reached the sun—
just like Icarus, the light was my undoing.
It wasn’t just a fall, I was plummeting…
a fallen star,
cast from the sky,
now I walk in shadows,
where our love met its end.
Like Lucifer—I embraced the night,
wandering through realms of regret and pain,
I shed my halo,
lost my light,
no longer an angel,
in your eyes or in my name.
Yet in this darkness,
a new path unfurls—
I find strength in the ashes of our broken vow,
rising from the ruins of our shattered world.
I reclaim my soul,
I’m reborn here and now.
No longer bound by your empty decree—
I soar with broken wings,
embracing the fallen,
the broken, the free,
a fallen angel finding strength
I never knew I’d own.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[Homecoming] Homecoming is a return to the Gothic aesthetic at the heart of Rowan Evans’s poetry, blending Poe, mythology, horror icons, moonlight, ravens, and darkness into a meditation on artistic identity and finding your way back to the voice that feels like home.
[The Monster in the Margins] Drawing inspiration from horror icons like Michael Myers, Ghostface, Freddy Krueger, and Pennywise, this poem explores the darker side of creativity—where inspiration becomes an unstoppable force lurking just beyond the edge of the page.
[The Monster in the Margins II] The Monster in the Margins II transforms Rowan Evans’s Seven Deadly Sins mythology into a horror story written between the lines, where Lust, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Pride, Envy, and Gluttony become monsters growing from pain, grudges, and scars.
[The Unkindness Descends] “The Unkindness Descends” is a Gothic symbolic poem exploring collapse, transformation, and the unsettling experience of being witnessed during moments of unraveling. Through raven imagery, ambiguity, and ritualistic atmosphere, the poem invites multiple interpretations—spiritual, psychological, ominous, or transformative.
[Gospel in Crimson] When writing becomes ritual and love becomes devotion, the line between creation and worship begins to blur. Gospel in Crimson explores obsession, artistry, and the sacred act of expression.
There are certain aesthetics that feel less like something we choose and more like something we recognize.
For me, Gothic imagery has always been one of those things.
Homecoming came from the realization that something in my writing had started to feel slightly unfamiliar. I was still writing about the moon, the ocean, the tides, ravens, horror, darkness, and the strange spaces where beauty and pain overlap—but somehow, I had drifted away from the particular Gothic atmosphere that has always felt like home to me.
So this poem became a return.
Poe is here because his shadow has been part of my literary DNA for years. Nyx and Hades are here because mythology gives me another language for darkness. The ravens are here because, in my own symbolic architecture, they have become witnesses, messengers, and companions. And the horror references—Jason, Ghostface, Pennywise, Michael Myers—are there because horror has never been merely about monsters to me.
It is about what the monsters represent.
Grief. Fear. Obsession. Rage. The parts of ourselves that refuse to stay buried.
There is also something deliberately self-aware about this poem. I am not simply listing Gothic references because they sound dark. I am talking about my relationship with the imagery itself—the way the moon has accumulated meaning across my work, the way the tides connect to emotion, and the way ravens have gradually become part of my mythology.
The darkness isn’t an aesthetic costume.
It’s architecture.
And after spending some time writing away from it, I realized that I wasn’t trying to become something new.
I was finding my way back to something that had been mine all along.
That’s why this poem is called Homecoming.
Sometimes you don’t discover where you belong.
Sometimes you remember.
— Rowan Evans
Sometimes the darkness isn’t somewhere you wandered into. Sometimes it’s the place where your voice has always felt most at home.
Homecoming Poetry by Rowan Evans
I’ve been writing like
I forgot which domain is mine,
I’m of the darkness—
just borrowed the light,
and made Poe’s throne my birthright.
I’m a gothic romantic,
I bleed for the art—
I’ve kissed the lips of Nyx
and wandered through
the realm of Hades.
I’m a poltergeist in life,
but at night I come alive—
witching hour is when I thrive.
I pray to the moon
and curse the sun—
I ascend to the throne
that Poe had spun.
I watch the ravens—
carrying messages where they fly,
eyes locked, tracking the treachery across the sky.
They are always watching—
silent witnesses to the rot inside.
It started to feel like something
in my pieces was missing—
like where was the gothic lace,
silk and satin sin, velvet and venom.
There was too much light—
even when ninety percent
of my imagery is night adjacent,
weaving in horror rhymes—
Friday the 13th, Night of Jason.
The moon in my rhymes has meaning,
when I write lines like the tides—I mean it,
even in my Ghostface cadence—
what’s your favorite scary movie?
Pennywise of the mind, sewer of thought—
I’m a monster like Michael,
when I chase—I don’t run, I walk.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[The Monster in the Margins] Drawing inspiration from horror icons like Michael Myers, Ghostface, Freddy Krueger, and Pennywise, this poem explores the darker side of creativity—where inspiration becomes an unstoppable force lurking just beyond the edge of the page.
[The Monster in the Margins II] The Monster in the Margins II transforms Rowan Evans’s Seven Deadly Sins mythology into a horror story written between the lines, where Lust, Wrath, Sloth, Greed, Pride, Envy, and Gluttony become monsters growing from pain, grudges, and scars.
[The Unkindness Descends] “The Unkindness Descends” is a Gothic symbolic poem exploring collapse, transformation, and the unsettling experience of being witnessed during moments of unraveling. Through raven imagery, ambiguity, and ritualistic atmosphere, the poem invites multiple interpretations—spiritual, psychological, ominous, or transformative.
[Gospel in Crimson] When writing becomes ritual and love becomes devotion, the line between creation and worship begins to blur. Gospel in Crimson explores obsession, artistry, and the sacred act of expression.
Love Addict (High on Love) is me taking one of my recurring themes—how intensely I experience love—and pushing the metaphor until it becomes impossible to ignore.
I’ve often written about love as something intoxicating. A rush. A chemical reaction. Something that can make the world feel brighter and the mind move faster. But this poem asks what happens when that metaphor is taken literally enough to become uncomfortable.
Because sometimes I don’t simply want love.
I crave it.
There is a difference.
The language of addiction works here because love can create its own strange cycle: anticipation, euphoria, uncertainty, withdrawal, craving, and the desperate desire for another hit of the feeling that made everything seem worthwhile.
And, naturally, my response to that craving is to write.
That’s one of the things I find fascinating about my relationship with poetry. I don’t merely write about what I’m feeling—I often metabolize the feeling through language. I take the emotion, push it through rhythm and metaphor, turn it over until I can see its shape, and then put it on the page.
So the final joke is also the truth.
I get high on love.
Then I get high on writing about getting high on love.
And apparently, the cycle continues.
Maybe that’s the real habit.
— Rowan Evans
Some people chase love. I apparently write it until the high wears off—and then write another poem.
Love Addict (High on Love) Poetry by Rowan Evans
I get high on love
like it’s a drug
and I’m an addict
with a habit,
fighting for every hit
that I can get—
if I could,
I would OD on it.
Inject it straight
to my chest,
in-between the ribs—
where the heart lives.
I’d take the risk,
the comedown, the crash,
just to feel one moment
where love doesn’t pass.
I get the shakes and quake,
knot in the stomach—cold sweats,
when love doesn’t sit in the chest—
it feels fake, not worth the weight.
Wait—
what was I saying?
I get high on love
like it’s a drug
and I’m an addict,
so I write lines
that expand the mind,
to feed the habit.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[Poet’s Curse] Poet’s Curse explores the painful side of falling too deeply: giving pieces of yourself away freely, taking accountability for your own heartbreak, and realizing that learning to let go can be harder than learning to love.
[When I Fall] When I Fall is a vulnerable poem about loving without reservation, feeling everything deeply, and refusing to make the heart smaller just because wholehearted love can sometimes lead to loneliness and pain.
There is a particular kind of heartbreak that doesn’t have a villain.
Sometimes nobody betrayed you.
Nobody lied.
Nobody promised you something they couldn’t give.
Sometimes someone simply exists, speaks to you, makes you feel something—and your heart decides to build an entire mythology around it.
That is where Poet’s Curse came from.
I’ve joked before about having a poet’s curse: the tendency to fall into feelings quickly, to hear a little beauty in someone’s voice and suddenly find myself wading into the waves after it. But beneath the joke is something I’ve had to become more honest about.
Sometimes my heartbreak is partly mine.
Not because I was wrong to feel what I felt, but because I have a habit of giving pieces of myself away before I’ve figured out whether there is somewhere safe for them to land.
The person in this poem didn’t necessarily do anything wrong. She didn’t promise me forever. She didn’t lead me somewhere just to abandon me. She talked—and I listened. I heard a siren’s song, and I chose to wade into the water.
So this isn’t a poem about blaming her.
It’s about looking at myself afterward and admitting something uncomfortable:
I learned how to hold on long before I learned how to let go.
And maybe that’s the real curse.
Not that I love too deeply.
Not that I feel too much.
But that once I give someone a piece of my heart, I don’t always know how to take my hands away from the fire.
Sometimes the only way forward is to stop calling that weakness a curse and start learning the skill I never had—
how to let go without becoming less capable of love.
— Rowan Evans
Sometimes the hardest thing to learn isn’t how to love—it’s how to let go of what you’ve already given away.
Poet’s Curse Poetry by Rowan Evans
Here we go again
it’s another season of sin,
the poet’s back
heartbroken with a pen.
Yeah, went and fuckin’
did it again—
it’s my fault
my heart is cracked,
with pieces missing.
You see, I give them away
too freely, it’s such a pain
to be me, I get hooked
too easily—
she did nothing wrong,
she didn’t lead me on, just talked
and I heard a siren’s song—
I waded into the waves,
prayed for things to change.
Pardon the moment of slowness,
give me a moment while I own this
and take accountability for my part
in breaking my heart.
It’s a poet’s curse—
I only learned how to hold on.
I never learned how to let go,
my feelings and emotion
like hot coals in my hands.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[When I Fall] When I Fall is a vulnerable poem about loving without reservation, feeling everything deeply, and refusing to make the heart smaller just because wholehearted love can sometimes lead to loneliness and pain.
When I Fall is about the way I experience love when I stop trying to make it smaller.
I have never been particularly good at feeling things halfway. When something reaches my heart, it tends to go deeper than the surface—into the marrow, into the places where emotion becomes difficult to separate from identity. That intensity can be beautiful, but it can also hurt when the love I give doesn’t find its way back to me.
The easy response would be to close myself off.
To dim the light.
To protect myself by pretending I don’t feel as deeply as I do.
But I don’t want to do that.
There is something important about refusing to treat your capacity for love as a flaw simply because someone else couldn’t—or wouldn’t—meet you there. Sometimes loving wholeheartedly means accepting that you may get hurt. Sometimes being honest about what you feel means sitting with the loneliness afterward.
That doesn’t mean the answer is to become colder.
I would rather keep my heart open.
I would rather love the way I love—whole, honest, and unhidden—than spend my life making myself smaller just to avoid the possibility of pain.
Maybe falling hard isn’t the problem.
Maybe the real courage is choosing to keep getting back up without becoming afraid of the fall.
— Rowan Evans
I would rather love wholeheartedly than make my heart smaller just to make the fall hurt less.
When I Fall Poetry by Rowan
When I fall, I fall hard.
I feel it all or nothing—
when it comes to matters of the heart.
There is no middle ground,
no in-between—
it’s all or nothing for me.
I send out love,
and no one returns with it.
so I sit alone—
it’s the same as always,
I’m used to it.
I wear my heart on my sleeve,
exposed to the elements.
That means I feel things deeply,
nothing is surface level—
everything is marrow deep.
So I pour myself in crimson ink
across a porcelain page—
the only place
that I can put this pain.
Still, I don’t close myself.
I don’t dim the light.
I don’t pretend my heart is smaller
than it is.
I love the way I love—
whole, honest, unhidden—
even if it leaves me alone sometimes.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[Where the Metaphors Lead] Some truths are easier to write than they are to say aloud. “Where the Metaphors Lead” explores the quiet space between dreams, confession, and the courage it takes to let another person know how deeply they’ve become woven into your inner world.
[Beach to Beach (How I Get There)] A dream becomes a journey between familiar shores and unfamiliar cities in Beach to Beach (How I Get There), a poem about imagined travel, ocean crossings, longing, and the places we hope to someday reach while awake.
[The World Shifted Around Us] The world transformed around us—beach, city streets, jungle—but we never moved. Sometimes love isn’t found in words, but in the quiet certainty of someone remaining clear while everything else fades.
[I’d Rather Try] Anyone can promise they’d die for someone. But love isn’t built on one dramatic moment—it’s built on showing up, trying again tomorrow, and proving your words through consistent action.
Not the Way Jesus Did (Get Stoned, Not Crucified) is intentionally irreverent. The title is meant to make you laugh, wince, or possibly do both at once—but beneath the joke is a serious frustration with religious judgment and the way people can use faith as a weapon against those they consider outsiders.
The poem isn’t really interested in attacking Christianity itself. It’s interested in the contradiction between preaching compassion and practicing condemnation. By placing myself alongside Jesus as someone walking with outcasts, misfits, and people pushed to the margins, I turn the accusation around: if your faith teaches you not to judge, why are you so determined to judge me?
The language is deliberately sharp because sometimes humor is the easiest way to expose hypocrisy. Sometimes you have to throw a little irreverence into the room before anyone is willing to look at the uncomfortable truth underneath it.
— Rowan Evans
Sometimes the people preaching judgment forget who they claim to follow.
Not the Way Jesus Did (Get Stoned, Not Crucified) Poetry by Rowan Evans
I’ve lived a life full of pain,
society throwing rocks and hate—
they think they are on the inside
of judgement’s gate.
I mean—
don’t get wrong,
I like to get stoned—
but not the way Jesus did.
If you’re offended by that,
you only see the surface—
you see the words,
but not the purpose.
You say you’re a Christian,
yet here you are trying to judge?
You know that’s not your job,
you have to leave it up to your God.
But it makes sense
you would treat me like him,
I walk the same path as he did.
Walking with the outcasts
and misfits—
the black sheep
of God’s kids.
Don’t make me a martyr
for the sins that he died for.
So, you want to know why
we don’t listen to you—
because your book
says not to listen to the fools,
preaching on corners
and praying outside of their rooms.
You do you
and leave us alone,
if we’re good people—
we’ll find our way home.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[Just Human] Just Human is a reflective free verse poem about seeing people before borders, choosing empathy over division, and finding home in our shared humanity rather than on a map.
[No You and I, Only Us] A hopeful free verse poem about empathy, borders, and imagining a world where humanity matters more than division.
[Sermon for the Fractured] Every poem I write is a sermon for the fractured soul. In Sermon for the Fractured, I explore divinity, imperfection, and the sacred act of rebuilding oneself, even when the world refuses your light.
Some poems feel less like they’re written and more like they’re discovered.
A Rose in the Ashes came from following an image rather than an outline. One symbol led to another until the poem became a journey through memory itself—through forgotten moments, lingering wounds, recurring dreams, and the quiet realization that healing doesn’t happen by avoiding the past.
The forest in this poem isn’t meant to be a literal place. It’s the landscape of memory, where some experiences remain vivid while others decay with time. The trees, the tunnel, the moon, the bay, and finally the rose all became landmarks within that emotional terrain.
The final image—a single rose blooming through ashes—reminded me that even after devastation, beauty doesn’t disappear forever. Sometimes it simply waits beneath the surface until we’re ready to notice it.
— Rowan Evans
Sometimes healing doesn’t appear as a blazing light at the end of the tunnel.
Sometimes it’s a single rose, quietly blooming where you thought only ashes remained.
A Rose in the Ashes Poetry by Rowan Evans
I wander through the mist and fog,
wondering if I’ve gotten myself lost.
The trees are thick with sickly green leaves,
and the air is too thick, it’s hard to breathe.
Every step feels borrowed,
like the ground isn’t sure
it wants to hold me.
It’s like with every step
the ground shifts a little to the left,
until nothing feels right.
It’s like I’ve walked
to the end of the tunnel,
but I didn’t find the light.
I keep walking, stumbling along—
the dark swallows me whole
and then spits me out.
I hit the ground and roll to a stop
on the edge of a fifty foot drop.
That’s when I see it,
something moving between the trees—
not a creature,
but a feeling—
the sense that I’m being asked
to keep going
even when I don’t know why.
Maybe it’s because
I didn’t find the light
at the end of the tunnel,
not because I failed—
but because the journey isn’t done.
The light signifies the end.
No light means the journey continues,
so I keep moving through—
the streets that I walk in sleep,
the moment I return to my bones,
or a war with gods to ease the pain.
Yeah, I followed the footprints
to the water’s edge,
I stared across at the coast
on the other side of silence.
And even from a distance,
I was able to trace
the moon across the heavens,
before it became suspended over the bay—
its reflection trembling across the dark water,
a mirror to the tremor in my chest.
But I couldn’t stay still for long—
I had to keep moving on.
So I ran—
bolted for the tree line,
tripped and stumbled in
and my eyes caught the way the light
pierced the canopy—
the light—
that’s what I’d been chasing
this whole time,
not at the end of the tunnel—
but above my head,
an idea—
my eyes drift toward the sky,
and that’s when I see—
the leaves on these trees
are not leaves,
they are memories—
some bright and vivid,
others a sickly shade of green.
Those are memories forgot,
memories left to rot.
But here’s the truth of this plot:
some memories fade—
whether you hold on or not,
and some become rooted
through pain, an environment
permanently changed.
And that’s what I saw…
trees with leaves
showing things—
I thought long forgotten.
I was more surprised by that,
than the fact that so many trees
looked rotten.
I could feel the tears
touch the corners of my eyes—
the air was thick again,
humid and suffocating.
There was a tremor in my chest,
and knees were weak—
with every step my bones were quaking,
like the earth was shaking.
I stumbled and fell to my knees,
head bowed—
in shame or respect,
who knows, now?
I opened my mouth,
but no jokes came out—
I couldn’t misdirect from this,
no sleight of hand.
I had to face this—
whatever it is,
whatever these leaves
show me,
I’ve got to take it seriously—
because maybe it is these memories
that are keeping me stuck here.
Maybe they are the memories
that drive the fear,
that keeps me from acting—
that keeps me dragging feet
and self-sabotaging.
Slowly I rise—
like the sun over the horizon.
Knees shaking from the weight of me,
I struggle to take one step
and then another.
I stumble through the ruins
of thoughts, dreams and memories—
my chest rises and falls,
like oxygen is in short supply.
Then I see it—
a single rose in bloom,
poking through the ashes
of nights only remembered
in the spilled ink on silent pages.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[One Honest Sentence] It’s easy to write about anything. What’s difficult is writing one completely honest sentence without hiding behind humor, references, or metaphor. One Honest Sentence explores the distance between poetic confidence and emotional vulnerability.
[Leave No Self Behind] What if finding yourself isn’t about discovering someone new, but learning to walk beside every version you’ve ever been? “Leave No Self Behind” is a meditation on memory, healing, and embracing the selves we once abandoned.
[More Afraid Than the Ink] Some confessions are easy to write but impossible to speak. More Afraid Than the Ink explores fear, dreams, recurring symbols, and the quiet realization that the page has always been braver than the poet.
[Just Human] Just Human is a reflective free verse poem about seeing people before borders, choosing empathy over division, and finding home in our shared humanity rather than on a map.
[Translating What I Feel] A poem about the invisible process of turning emotion into imagery, imagery into language, and language into poetry. An intimate reflection on creativity, loneliness, and twenty-three years of learning to translate what the heart feels.
Poetry by Rowan Evans 