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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: Healing Through Art

  • Across the Page-cific (Chasing Storms) | Poetry About Creativity, Healing & Finding Yourself

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    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

    A paper ship made from an open notebook sails across an ocean of handwritten poetry toward a storm and glowing light.
    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.

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

  • The Music Holds Me Upright – A Poem About Music, Mental Health, and Creativity

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    I’ve realized over the years that music does more than inspire my writing.

    It organizes me.

    When my thoughts become too loud, too fragmented, too heavy to carry all at once, music gives them shape. Rhythm turns chaos into movement. Emotion becomes something I can follow instead of drown in.

    This piece is about that process.

    About the strange balance between instability and expression. Between wobbling and staying upright. Between feeling overwhelmed… and still creating anyway.

    The references throughout the poem aren’t random. They reflect the sounds and artists that genuinely help ground me—music that travels across borders the same way emotion does.

    Because sometimes healing doesn’t look like silence or peace.

    Sometimes it looks like headphones on, music loud, pen moving, and surviving one line at a time.

    — Rowan Evans

    Person writing poetry in a dimly lit room surrounded by music-inspired imagery and candlelight
    The ground may shake, but music, ink, and light still hold me upright.

    The Music Holds Me Upright
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I sit with them
    when thoughts get heavy—

    the weight
    I’ve struggled
    to carry.

    My spine bends,
    but never breaks.

    They call me weeble,
    the way I wobble
    but don’t fall down.

    Standing
    on shaking ground.

    Depression.
    Anxiety.

    The fire
    inside of me.

    Flames flicker—
    entranced—

    the pen
    begins
    to dance.

    When thoughts grow heavy
    with the weight
    I’ve struggled
    to carry—

    I write.

    Lights.
    Camera.
    Action.

    The page—
    a stage.

    The pen—
    a dancer.

    Weaving
    ink-stained paths
    across lined paper.

    Word after word,
    I write what hurts—

    but I need
    the music first.

    Soundtrack
    to the chaos,
    drifting through
    Thailand,
    Japan,
    Korea,
    and the Philippines.

    Soundscapes
    helping my emotions
    take shape.

    Painting images,
    arranging metaphors—

    the music becomes
    a tour guide
    inside my mind.

    Each stop
    refracting—

    light fractured,
    split.

    A new emotion
    coming into focus
    as the sound shifts.

    And still,
    I steady—

    not by force,
    but by rhythm.

    The ground may shake.
    The thoughts grow heavy.

    But the music,
    the ink,
    the light—

    they hold me upright
    every time.

    So let the scene roll.
    Let the soundtrack swell.

    I’ll take every fracture,
    every wobble,
    every spark—

    and turn it
    into something
    that moves.

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

  • The Lesson Beneath the Veil

    Rowan Evans

    Last night, sleep opened its velvet throat—
    and I fell into the hush between heartbeats,
    where the walls of the world breathe slow,
    and time forgets its name.

    He stood there.
    My father—
    not as ash in the urn,
    but as shadow sewn in dreamlight,
    his voice a paper lantern in the fog.

    He said something.
    Words folded in half,
    creased like love letters unsent.
    A tongue I should have known
    but could not parse—
    like trying to read raindrops
    as they run down glass.

    His eyes were galaxies
    just out of reach—
    all gravity, no ground.
    He smiled like someone
    who’s seen the ending
    and can’t explain it.

    Was it a message?
    A map?
    A test?

    He left me with nothing but silence
    stitched in silk and salt,
    and the ache of unlearned riddles
    tattooed across my chest.

    Now I sit beneath the fig tree of my grief,
    its fruit swollen with unsaid things.
    I peel back memory like skin,
    searching for symbols in marrow,
    for parables in pulse.

    What was I meant to understand?
    That love does not end,
    only alters its architecture?
    That the dead do not speak in answers,
    but in echoes
    and invitations?

    Some lessons aren’t given.
    They’re grown—
    like thorns
    from the same vine as the rose.

    And maybe
    that was the point.