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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: contemporary poet

  • Calculating Profits (Ledger of Lives) – A Powerful Anti-War Poem by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    War is often framed through numbers – casualty counts, budgets, troop movements, strategic gains. But behind every statistic is a life, a family, a story that rarely gets told. Calculating Profits (Ledger of Lives) is a response to that reduction of humanity into arithmetic.

    This poem confronts the uncomfortable truth that while war is frequently portrayed as a contest of nations, the consequences are carried by ordinary people. Civilians lose homes, children lose futures, and entire communities are reshaped by decisions made far from the battlefield.

    The poem’s title references the cold language of accounting–ledgers, calculations, profits–to highlight how easily human suffering can be reframed as strategy or necessity. I wrote this piece to challenge the normalization of war as spectacle and to remind readers that the cost is never abstract. Every loss echoes through generations.

    Sometimes poetry must be gentle.
    Other times, it must speak plainly.

    This poem chooses the latter.

    — Rowan Evans

    Conceptual illustration of a battlefield fading into an accounting ledger, symbolizing the human cost of war being reduced to numbers.
    When lives become numbers, the ledger of war never truly balances.

    Calculating Profits (Ledger of Lives)
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’m so sick of this, it’s ridiculous,
    the way we glorify war like a sports game—fictitious.
    Us vs Them, who’s gonna win?
    While kids in rubble pray their lives begin.

    Flags wave, bombs blaze, headlines spin,
    nobody wins, but governments grin.
    Life lost, life changed, families torn apart,
    yet they call it “strategy,” cold as a heart.

    Soldiers march, leaders sit in their chairs,
    calculating profits while ignoring prayers.
    Civilians flee, the streets taste of ash,
    diplomacy dies in the bureaucratic clash.

    Every life a number in a ledger they hide,
    every tear a story the textbooks won’t write.
    We cheer heroes in videos, oblivious, blind,
    never realizing the price war leaves behind.

    Us vs Them—what a childish game,
    but it’s blood they gamble with, never their name.
    I spit this truth, raw, without disguise,
    because war is a lie, and I see through…

    the why—
    lies.

    If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]

  • This Is Confession — A Neo-Gothic Love Poem by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This Is Confession is one of those pieces that arrives when I’ve stopped trying to be poetic and instead let myself be honest. It’s less a poem and more a moment of emotional transparency—an admission pulled straight from the chest rather than crafted on the page.

    I have a habit of writing around the things I feel most deeply, hiding truth between metaphors or reshaping it into imagery so it feels safer. This time, I didn’t want safety. I wanted clarity. I wanted to name the weight and tenderness of caring for someone quietly, intensely, without performance or pretense.

    Sometimes the most frightening thing we can do is say something plainly.
    Sometimes the bravest thing is letting the truth stand without armor.

    This piece is that bravery for me.

    — Rowan Evans

    A candlelit scene with an ink-covered page and spilled black ink, evoking a gothic, intimate confession.
    A moment of truth written in ink—where confession becomes poetry.

    This Is Confession
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’ve done this once before,
    but this isn’t poetry…
    This—
    this is confession.

    This is me spilling my guts
    in ink-carved words.
    Even on the days we don’t talk,
    you’re still at the forefront of my thoughts.
    Your name lingers on the tip
    of my tongue.
    You’re my favorite topic—
    not to sound too obsessive.

    But even obsession feels too small a word
    for the way my thoughts orbit you.

    You’re the gravity I return to,
    even on the days I swear I’m drifting.
    Some names echo—
    yours resonates.

    I don’t know when it happened,
    but somewhere between your laughter
    and your pain,
    I started carrying pieces of you
    like they were my own.

    I kept it quiet.
    I didn’t say a thing.

    Not because I’m ashamed,
    but because admitting it feels like stepping
    into a room lit only by truth—
    and truth has never been gentle with me.

    It’s always been the same:
    people take what they want from me—
    then they leave.
    Or they leave the moment I open up,
    start to spill my guts, just a little—
    when I get a little too real,
    too much,
    too feel.

    Two truths and a lie…
    The truth is—
    I’ve always cared more than I should,
    and I’ve always been better at hurting myself
    than disappointing anyone else.

    The lie is pretending
    I don’t feel all of this
    every time you cross my mind.

    Because the truth is—
    you do.
    Every day.
    In ways I don’t admit out loud,
    in ways I fold quietly
    between the lines of every poem
    I swear isn’t about you.

    And maybe this is reckless,
    maybe this is too much—
    but confession was never meant
    to be safe.

    It was meant to be honest.
    And honestly?
    I’d spill every last secret I have
    if it meant you’d understand
    even a fraction
    of how deeply
    you live in me.

    Looking for more poetry? You can find it all in the Library of Ashes.