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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: Conversational Poetry

  • Lost in the Sauce | A Funny Love Poem About Heartbreak & Confusion

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Sometimes a poem is born from heartbreak.

    Sometimes it is born from a metaphor.

    And sometimes my brain apparently looks at a sandwich and says, yes, this is how we’re processing emotional confusion today.

    Lost in the Sauce is a deliberately playful poem built around food-related wordplay, particularly the language of sandwiches, condiments, bread, and the wonderfully terrible possibilities hidden inside them.

    The jokes are intentionally stupid.

    That is part of the point.

    “Bread” becomes “rye.” “Ketchup” becomes “catch up.” “Mustard” becomes “must’ve.” “Sourdough” becomes an emotional description. Even “lettuce meat in the middle” is doing multiple jobs at once.

    But beneath all of that nonsense is something much more familiar: the confusion of being told that everything is okay while someone’s behavior feels completely different.

    The speaker is trying to understand the contradiction.

    They were told the relationship was fine.

    They were told the other person was happy.

    So why does everything suddenly feel cold?

    Why does affection feel sour?

    Why does the speaker feel trapped in place, struggling to catch up to something they don’t fully understand?

    The ridiculous wordplay gives me permission to approach that emotional confusion without making the poem overly solemn.

    I’ve been rediscovering how much I enjoy treating language like a playground—taking ordinary words, twisting them until they become something else, and seeing how far I can push a joke before the emotional meaning underneath it starts showing through.

    So yes, this poem is about sandwiches.

    Sort of.

    Mostly, it’s about being lost in the sauce when the person you’re trying to understand has already changed the recipe.

    — Rowan Evans

    A surreal sandwich with layers of bread, meat, lettuce, tomato, ketchup, and mustard separating two figures.
    Sometimes you don’t fall apart.
    Sometimes you just get lost in the sauce. 🥪

    Lost in the Sauce
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    You sandwiched me in
    with an all-tomato—

    love you or leave,
    but I couldn’t do it clean—

    I was lost in the sauce,
    begging lettuce
    meat in the middle.

    You said, “you lie.”
    I said, “Nah, you rye.”

    But do you know why?
    I was stuck in place,
    you wouldn’t wait—

    I was struggling
    to ketchup.
    I thought you
    mustard—

    how could you not?
    People talk.

    Look—
    I’m sorry.
    I don’t want to fight.
    But, you said—
    you were happy.
    We were okay.

    So why you so cold,
    why you actin’ sourdough?

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [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.

    [Blended Hardware]
    A playful, absurdist poem where step-ladders, garden hoses, Star Wars, teenage memories, Gothic imagery, and the poet’s own self-interrupting commentary collide. Blended Hardware is a celebration of letting language wander.

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

  • Did You Really Think This Was About Trees? | A Playful Love Poem

    Rowan Evans

    Every now and then, affection shows up wearing bark and leaves. Today was one of those days.

    A romantic couple beneath palm trees on a summer beach with a whimsical wooden castle nearby.
    Did you really think this was about trees? 🌳

    Did You Really Think This Was About Trees?
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Birch, I’m in a mood—
    but I’m feelin’ pretty Oak today,
    oops, I mean, a-o-k—
    especially with my Rose Wood beside me,
    open my eyes, so I could Cedar—
    her fingers in my hair,
    like the breeze through the leaves.

    Did you really think
    this was about trees?

    It’s just me and her
    by the summer seas,
    just us with Palms in the sand—
    castle and a plot of land,
    where she is royalty—
    a Queendom built
    off the back of loyalty.

    And that’s something I don’t lack,
    I got it in stacks—packed to the rafters,
    stick with me and you’ll have a life full of laughter—
    you’ll never get board like a lumberyard,
    and I work hard—
    to prove my words have meaning,
    even when they are weird
    or absurdist leaning.

    Author’s Note

    Sometimes I write a poem because I have something profound to say.

    Sometimes I write one because my brain looked at a bunch of tree names and apparently decided they needed to become flirting material.

    This is the latter.

    Did You Really Think This Was About Trees? is a deliberately ridiculous little love poem built almost entirely around wordplay. Birch, oak, rosewood, cedar, palms, lumberyards, boards—I’m taking language that belongs to the world of trees and woodworking and forcing it into a completely different emotional landscape.

    And yes, the title is absolutely part of the joke.

    The poem starts by making the reader think they’re about to get some sort of nature poem. Then I reveal that the trees were never really the subject.

    The subject was her.

    The forest is just the camouflage.

    I also wanted the poem to feel conversational and slightly chaotic. The little correction from “Oak” to “a-o-k,” the exaggerated promises, the lumberyard imagery, and the final admission that the whole thing is leaning toward absurdism are all intentional.

    There is something freeing about allowing a love poem to be stupidly playful.

    Not every expression of affection needs to be solemn.

    Sometimes love looks like poetry.

    Sometimes it looks like devotion.

    And sometimes it looks like spending an entire poem making increasingly terrible tree puns because you love someone enough to make yourself laugh while writing about them.

    Honestly, I’ll take all three.

    — Rowan Evans

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Blended Hardware]
    A playful, absurdist poem where step-ladders, garden hoses, Star Wars, teenage memories, Gothic imagery, and the poet’s own self-interrupting commentary collide. Blended Hardware is a celebration of letting language wander.

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

  • Blended Hardware — A Playful Poem About Friendship, Memory & Language

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some poems begin with a carefully constructed metaphor.

    This one began with a step-ladder.

    And then immediately refused to behave.

    Blended Hardware is intentionally ridiculous. I started with a simple object and let my mind wander wherever the language wanted to take it: ladders became hoses, hoses became an excuse for a terrible joke, friendship became Star Wars, Obi-Wan became a teacher, Luke became Leia, and suddenly I was revisiting different versions of myself across my writing history.

    That wandering is the point.

    I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much more playful my relationship with language has become. I don’t always sit down with a destination in mind anymore. Sometimes I just start writing and see what happens.

    This poem is one of those moments.

    It also became a strange little conversation between different versions of Rowan. The fifteen-year-old writer appears briefly, the Gothic voice tries to take over, and the present-day me immediately interrupts to tell her to calm the hell down.

    That self-interruption is probably one of my favorite parts of the piece.

    I can write something dramatic and immediately recognize that I have made the moment far more Gothic than it needs to be.

    I can make a joke, realize the joke went somewhere questionable, and then literally put myself on trial inside the poem.

    That is part of what makes writing feel like a playground again.

    I don’t have to protect every poem from being silly.

    I don’t have to make every metaphor profound.

    I don’t have to prove that every line deserves to exist.

    Sometimes I can just follow a thought until it becomes a garden hose, an Obi-Wan reference, a fifteen-year-old version of myself, and an increasingly concerned author asking whether she accidentally threatened somebody.

    And honestly?

    That’s enough.

    — Rowan Evans

    A surreal step-ladder surrounded by garden hoses, handwritten pages, ink, feathers, and whimsical literary objects.
    Sometimes you start with a step-ladder and end up somewhere completely different.

    Blended Hardware
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    This is my step-ladder.

    I call it a step-ladder,
    because I had another
    ladder before—

    and yeah, I got plenty hose—
    different shapes and different sizes,
    some are six feet, some are four—
    I’m glad I only have two outside faucets,
    ’cause I wouldn’t have plenty hose,
    if I had one more. (I only have two hoses.)

    You’re not just my homie,
    you’re my Obi-wan Kenobi—
    and I’m Luke, mixed with Leia.
    That means you’re my teacher,
    and my only hope, playa.

    (I’m sorry for that, truly.
    I don’t know what I was thinking.
    I’m going to…
    I’m going to put the pen down now.)

    SIKE! I lied like it’s 1999—
    four more years and the myth would start,
    a poet born with a blackened heart.

    (Dial back,
    that was too gothic for this piece.)

    I mean, sike… I lied like it’s 2005—
    and I’m fifteen with a pen again,
    two years into the journey
    mapping how I’d survive—

    and I mean me, not them—
    I’m talking the person
    they’d grow into.
    The person I’d caution you,
    against taking a pen to—

    that’s a battle you wouldn’t win, boo.

    (Wait…

    was that a threat?

    In a joke poem?

    Too far, Rowan…
    too far.)

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Not the Way Jesus Did]
    A provocative poem about religious judgment, hypocrisy, outcasts, and the contradiction between preaching compassion and condemning those who live differently.

    [Noon is Loud]
    If four in the morning belongs to truth, then noon belongs to impossible memories. Noon Is Loud is a playful free verse poem filled with absurd boasts, pop culture references, and tongue-in-cheek mythology that explores how easily imagination can rewrite reality.

    [Content Warning]
    What if you reviewed a person the way you’d review a terrible novel? Content Warning is a playful, satirical poem that uses literary criticism as the ultimate roast, proving that sometimes the sharpest metaphor is also the funniest.

    [Chemical X]
    Chemical X explores the rapid, associative way one creative mind moves—from cartoons to sports, comic books to music—revealing that inspiration isn’t linear, but a collision of memory, humor, rhythm, and intuition.

    [Off Leash Thought]
    A reflective free verse poem exploring the mind as a living, wandering force—unpredictable, creative, and sometimes chaotic—through the metaphor of a dog off leash. It embraces mental drift not as a flaw, but as a natural part of creative thought and self-awareness.

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

  • No Stupid Questions — A Poem About Listening, Curiosity & Frustration

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Sometimes a poem doesn’t need to be profound.

    Sometimes it just needs to say, “Please fucking listen.”

    No Stupid Questions came from that particular kind of frustration—the kind that happens when someone asks something that has already been answered, interrupts the flow of a conversation, or throws a question into the room without stopping to consider whether the information they want is already sitting right in front of them.

    The old saying goes, “There are no stupid questions.”

    I don’t completely agree.

    Questions aren’t inherently stupid. Curiosity is valuable, and asking for clarification is often exactly what we should do. But there is a difference between genuinely wanting to understand something and simply asking whatever crosses your mind without listening to what was already said.

    This poem is intentionally blunt because the frustration is blunt.

    It’s conversational, a little sarcastic, and unapologetically irritated. There are times when I want my poetry to dress an idea in metaphor and symbolism. Other times, I just want to point at the problem and say exactly what I mean.

    No metaphor.

    No elaborate mythology.

    No moon, tide, raven, or rose to hide behind.

    Just:

    You already got your answer.

    Listen.

    — Rowan Evans

    P.S. – The end of this piece is entirely a joke.

    A writer at a desk surrounded by chaotic question marks while a clear answer sits untouched in an open notebook.

    No Stupid Questions
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    You know—

    the person that said,
    “there’s no such thing
    as a stupid question,”—

    probably asked a lot
    of stupid questions,
    just like you—

    Not trying to be rude
    or give attitude—

    but dude,
    you asked that question
    out of the blue.

    (And it was dumb,
    it was a stupid question…
    I had to break the flow to tell you,
    you asked a stupid question.)

    I already told you—

    I already answered back,
    if you need the information
    then listen—I already gave you that.

    Do you even think
    before you speak,
    or do you just
    let your thoughts fly?

    You don’t have to ask
    every question
    that comes to mind.

    I don’t care
    if you are a child.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [You Are Perfect]
    A gentle reminder that your worth isn’t determined by your flaws or by the opinions of others. You Are Perfect is a poem about resilience, self-acceptance, and standing tall even when the world tries to make you feel small.

    [Human Rorschach]
    Sometimes we’re less a fixed person than an inkblot—our meaning changing with every set of eyes that looks at us. Human Rorschach explores perception, identity, and the ways our own experiences shape what we believe we see in others.

    [A Rose in the Ashes]
    Lost within a forest where every leaf becomes a memory, the speaker follows darkness instead of fleeing from it, discovering that healing isn’t found at the end of the tunnel—but in facing the past long enough to notice a single rose blooming through the ashes.

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