Author’s Note

With the first two Slim & Shady pieces, I played with wordplay, rhythm, and a mischievous flirtation with language itself. Roses & Ruin takes that foundation and dives headlong into the shadows, folding the rapid-fire energy of those earlier works into the Gothic, the dark, and the confessional.

This is a piece where internal rhymes twist like thorns, where each line is a pulse, a heartbeat in the night, and where the mischief of my previous Slim & Shady experiments meets the obsidian corridors of my usual poetic terrain. Here, puns give way to petals and ruin, shadows curl around syllables, and devotion bleeds into obsession.

If the first two pieces were an introduction, consider this a full plunge: a labyrinthine descent into word, darkness, and the chaos that sits at the heart of desire, grief, and art itself.

— Rowan Evans

Slim & Shady III: Roses & Ruin
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I’m slim, I’m shady, velvet knives in the mist,
Roses drip ruin, each petal a clenched fist.
Thorns lace the tongue, venom drips in the rhyme,
Darkness cavorts, tick-tock, tick-tock, time.

Whispers coil like serpents in cathedral halls,
Shadows in mirrors, fractured, jagged, they crawl.
Heartbeats stutter, syncopated with decay,
Every breath a requiem, night swallows day.

I lace my obsessions, fold chaos in ink,
Every line a razor, every word makes you think.
Grief in triple-time, pain in quadruple beats,
I rhyme like a demon dancing in hidden streets.

Velvet grief hums under ribcage’s dome,
Each syllable a coffin, each pause a tombstone.
I sip on the night, swallow shadows for fun,
Petals, blood, and ruin—my work never done.

Lust for the language, hunger for sound,
I’m cathedral and crypt, where despair is crowned.
Roses wilt, thorns pierce, devotion decays,
Ink spits apocalypse in midnight arrays.

I fold agony neat, crease it with care,
Coffin of verses, Gothic despair.
My love’s a phantom, a tremor, a scar,
A blackened ballet beneath a cold, distant star.

Breathless, reckless, pun-dripped and sly,
I’m the whisper, the scream, the unshed sigh.
Roses & ruin, I bloom while I break,
Every rhyme a storm, every line a stake.

Caged obsessions, shadow’s delight,
I spin the chaos, ignite the night.
Slim & shady, not Marshall, still true,
I bend words to ruin, I bleed them for you.

Cathedral of syllables, labyrinth of sound,
Each echo a shiver, each verse underground.
So kneel in the rhythm, drown in the spree,
I am Gothic devotion, Roses & Ruin, fully free.

Explore the Entire Series

If you are interested in reading the whole series, find it here: The Slim & Shady Series