This piece isn’t anti-anyone. It isn’t even anti-country.
It’s about perspective.
Growing up inside any system makes it easy to believe that your experience is the default setting for the world. But no nation is immune to propaganda, and no culture holds a monopoly on truth.
Not the Default is a reminder — to myself as much as anyone else — to question comfortably inherited narratives, to look beyond borders, and to understand that expanding your worldview isn’t betrayal… it’s growth.
— Rowan Evans
“The border isn’t the edge of the world — just the edge of your comfort.”
Not the Default Poetry by Rowan Evans
Oh, you sound
so surprised—
like you think
our government
never lies.
Like propaganda
is a foreign concept,
something they do
but never us.
But what do you
know of China, bruh?
I’m not trying
to shatter
your mind.
I’m just saying—
expand
your world view.
Look beyond
the borders.
See that your life
is not
the default.
Things are different
all across
the globe.
But the sad truth is—
some of us
were taught
to never question
our own.
The border isn’t the edge
of the world—
just the edge
of your comfort.
This poem traces the moment when disconnection stopped being temporary and started feeling structural. At fourteen, I didn’t just feel out of place—I felt offline. Like my signal never quite reached the world I was standing in.
The language of technology felt like the closest mirror for that experience: dropped signals, endless queues, systems that never respond. This isn’t nostalgia, and it isn’t blame—it’s recognition. Naming the feeling that followed me for years before I understood what it was.
Some people search for belonging. Some of us search for a connection that was never stable to begin with.
— Rowan Evans
Some disconnections start early—and never fully resolve.
Disconnected Since Fourteen (Lost in Queue) Poetry by Rowan Evans
I used to sit alone, lost in thoughts of far off places—far from… home.
I’d write about every one, write about them in my… poems.
The way longing bled into art, art bled the words from my heart. It was the truth spilling— feeling homeless, since I was fourteen.
Felt disconnected, like the Wi-Fi dropped. Mind static, dramatic, screaming like… dial-up.
Trying to connect to somewhere that never answers. Server overloaded, lost in queue— endless, connection loop.
I do not belong here. Everything feels wrong here.
This piece came from that subtle shift — the moment when someone stops being just a presence in your life and starts becoming a direction. It’s about the quiet work that happens behind the scenes, the way you start rearranging your habits, your thoughts, your intentions, not because you’re trying to impress someone, but because you genuinely want to meet them where they are.
It’s not a confession.
It’s not a promise.
It’s an acknowledgment.
A recognition that connection isn’t built in grand gestures, but in patience, consistency, and the willingness to grow into someone who can hold another person’s trust. This poem is me naming that process — the slow, steady movement toward “us,” whatever shape that eventually takes.
Sometimes love isn’t a leap — it’s a steady walk in the same direction.
Working Toward Us Poetry by Rowan Evans
It’s strange,
the way things can change—
the way a single person
can make you want to
rearrange everything.
Isn’t it strange?
The way someone can
sit right there
on the tip of the
tongue.
Isn’t it something?
When every word
spoken
becomes a love token,
simply because
it carries a piece of them too.
And every word written
takes the shape
of her silhouette.
Because when my pen
hits the page,
it’s like a brush
dancing across canvas.
I try to capture
the beautiful hues
of a soul in motion,
with nothing but ink
and observation.
Learning everything I can
through conversation.
I want to understand…
I’m patient.
But I want you to know,
I’m working toward us—
whatever shape that takes,
I want to be
somebody
you can truly trust.
Somebody
you can lean on
when things get
a little too rough.
I’m working toward
you and I, walking
the same streets.
You and I, side by side
enjoying life.
I wasn’t trying to be deep or careful — I was letting my brain sprint, letting pop culture, mythology, and intrusive thoughts collide on the page. Comics, villains, alter egos, masks — all the familiar metaphors we use when our minds feel too loud to live in quietly.
What surprised me wasn’t the darkness, but the balance. This isn’t a descent — it’s a return with awareness. Standing in the light doesn’t mean pretending the shadows don’t exist. It means no longer fearing them.
This is what it feels like when poetry stops being a tool and starts being a force — when the ink takes over, and you let it.
Where chaos, identity, and ink collide.
Back to Darkseid Poetry by Rowan Evans
I walk in,
ready to rock
like a shock
to the system.
Watch me
ghost ride the whip,
hit you with the
penance stare.
Watch as you become
hyper aware
of every misdeed,
and every sin seeps
into the veins.
It circulates
until it hits
the brain.
Lights out.
Silence.
My noggin’s
an asylum,
I’m sick in the head.
Coin flip of fate,
I’m two-faced
with my joker’s thoughts.
I’m a dark knight,
on a dark night—
fighting the monsters
that my mind creates.
Don’t try to figure me out.
I’m an enigma, a riddle
with no answer.
A twisted harlequin
in a garden
made by Ivy.
Each petal unfurls,
guiding—
leading me back
from the edge.
Now I’m standing in the light,
back to Darkseid—
I no longer fear
Apocalypse.
Watch my ink
twist into tendrils.
Watch as they
wrap around,
and creep up
my spine like venom.
Watch as poetry
slowly,
takes over
my mind.
This piece is the closest I’ve come to writing the truth of my internal war without softening it. Between Worlds is about self-violence—the way the mind learns your weak spots, remembers the old wounds, and knows exactly where to cut. It’s a poem about relapse, about memory, about survival, and about the strange loneliness that follows healing.
It speaks to the years where I wasn’t sure I’d make it. The hospital walls. The padded quiet. The fluorescent lights humming through the silence. It speaks to dissociation, to identity, to queerness, and to the mythic distance I’ve always felt between who I am and the world I live in.
This poem isn’t a cry for help—it’s a record of survival. It isn’t tragedy for tragedy’s sake—it’s truth. It’s the reality that healing isn’t linear, that progress has shadows, and that sometimes the loudest battles are fought in the mind no one else can see.
If you know this feeling—of standing in your own skin like it never quite fits, of fighting thoughts with thoughts, of loving your existence even when you question your place in it—then I hope you feel seen here.
Because none of us are alone in the in-between.
— Rowan Evans
Between Worlds — artwork representing Rowan Evans’ poem about surviving mental illness, dissociation, and identity beyond binaries.
Between Worlds Poetry by Rowan Evans
Why do I always try to pick a fight with me?
You’d think I’d know, by now, just how quick I’ll slip an insult under the ribs.
I’ll hit every single fear, twist them like a knife— until I’m on my knees, gasping, spitting blood.
I don’t fight fair. I target old wounds, tear at what’s already healed. I’ll fuck around and send myself back ten years— back to hospital walls and quiet rooms, where the only sound was the fluorescent hum.
Where time dissolved… where clocks stopped ticking.
But I walked out of those halls— didn’t I?
Didn’t I?
But what if I didn’t? What if I’m still locked inside, in a padded room with the jacket strapped tight? Thoughts confined, so the words won’t escape.
Writing poems in my head, just to pass the time.
I’ve been alive, but dead inside. And I’ll be honest: I’ve died inside my mind more than a dozen times.
I just wanted escape.
Escape from pain, from feeling misplaced— I just wanted to belong.
But it’s like— something is wrong here. Why don’t I feel like I belong here?
Why does everything feel a half inch to the left— like I’m living inside the echo of myself?
Like I’m watching my life from behind fogged glass, palms against the surface, screaming— but no sound passes through.
Sometimes I swear the world forgets I’m here, and sometimes I do too.
Maybe it’s because every room I walk into, I’m half a ghost already— too queer, too quiet, too soft, too strange. Too fucking much for everyone but me.
Maybe that’s why the fight never ends— because I’m still trying to prove I deserve the space I take up, even in my own skin.
So maybe I don’t belong here because I was born between worlds— not alive, not dead, not human, not myth, not safe, not ruined.
Maybe my bones remember a home I never had, and every heartbeat since has been an attempt to map my way back.
Done Being Humble III is my unapologetic, playful ode to the chaos, creativity, and sheer joy of writing. It’s a celebration of 22 years of honing my craft, a nod to my earlier works like PokéDevotion and Vaporeon Drip, Flareon Bliss, and a tribute to the rebellious, unfiltered energy that drives my poetry. Above all, it’s a wink to fellow poets: I’m just playing, and I love you.
The Luminous Heretic rises—Done Being Humble III celebrates fearless poetry and playful mastery.
Done Being Humble III Poetry by Rowan Evans
My cringiest shit— is better than your best lines. My free-verse— has more rhythm than your best rhymes. My worst ideas— leave your cleverest in the dust. My chaos— writes its own applause.
Yeah— I’ve told you twice already. I’m done bein’ humble, and I fuckin’ mean it. Don’t compare yourself to me, you’ll be sorely disappointed. ‘Cause I’m the best to ever do it. Pen or keyboard, it doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve been writing since I was 13, here I am one year past 34.
That’s 35, if you didn’t know. Can you do that math? That’s 22 years, and thousands of rhymes— free-verse lines, I’ve mastered them. Remixed, flipped and pieced them back together. I wrote Pokérotica, Vaporeon Drip, Flareon Bliss, and somehow made it work though, you wrote your raw feelings— they came out like a fuckin’ joke, bro.
While, I told my muse— if she gave me a Chansey, I’d make her feel Blissey. Told her I won’t Leafeon. No doubts, I wouldn’t Leavanny. I’d wrap her in PokéDevotion, Swadloon, because I’m Rhyperior to the idiots and assholes.
I could do one better— watch me propose, with a Pokémon joke. Girl, give me your ring finger— I’ll put the fattest Regirock on it. I’ll get down on bended knee, present the Ursaring. Will you marry me, teddybear? My Teddiursa, swear I’d never do a thing to hurt ya.
And I can do it, fast or slow. Internal rhymes or no. Because that’s the way, Slim & Shady made me. I can spin it gothic, I can spin it tender. I can be the light, the dark, the in-between. The King or Queen, it matters not, when you’re confronting the poet and the rot.
I wrote the bones that refused to break, the stars that trembled for the ones, for which I ache. I turned confession into gospel, gothic into devotion, and every fractured girl into a cathedral I kneel before.
I birthed a whole damn genre while you were still trying to rhyme “pain” with “rain.” Neo‑Gothic, Confessional, Romantic— yeah, that flame? That’s me. I’m the heretic who lit the match, and you’re just choking on the smoke.
Now, that’s what you get— when you fuck with the Luminous Heretic, and the Fourfold Flame of this poetry game. I’m the fuckin’ best, Rowan Evans… remember the name.
And I’m just playin’, fellow poets. You know I love you.
Journey into the Hexverse
[Done Being Humble] A defiant, unfiltered ode to self-worth and poetic mastery, Done Being Humble is Rowan Evans at their most unapologetic—twenty-two years of ink, fire, and evolution distilled into a lyrical declaration of power.
[Done Being Humble II] Rowan Evans declares their god-tier mastery of the pen in Done Being Humble II, a bold, unapologetic ode to Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.
This one’s for my favorite Filipina — a little ode to laughs, love, and high-high vibes. Pop-culture winks included; if you understand them, you get bonus points. 😉
High-High: A poetic tribute to love, laughter, and devotion—Rowan Evans.
High-High Poetry by Rowan Evans
You’re my favorite Filipina, Attitude stronger than Mary Jane. Girl, you get me high-high, rising on your laugh, floating in your flame— I feel the buzz just saying your name.
Who needs drugs when you’re my bliss? I could overdose from a single kiss. Girl, you get me high-high, like Red Bull, you give me wings— so watch me fly.
I was sober til the day I met you, now I’m addicted, it’s true. Roll up your smile, spark the flame, girl, you get me high-high, Every time you say my name.
Yeah, you get me high-high, like it’s Puffy, Ami Yumi. I mean, you make me want to Park— myself right next to you, like my name is Sandara.
Trust—I’ll never let you feel alone. Mahal Kita. Mahal Ko. I’ll take your laugh, inject it straight into my veins— let it feed directly into my brain.
Girl, you get me high-high, and you’re my favorite Filipina. You’re my favorite munchie to turn to— girl, you’re the drug and the snack.
Poetry by Rowan Evans 