Author’s Note

The Metaphor Machine is a poem about the machinery behind my own poetry. I wanted to pull back the curtain and show what happens when a single line starts generating connections: moonlight becomes tide, tide becomes ocean, ocean becomes shoreline, shoreline becomes city streets, and suddenly the poem has wandered somewhere entirely different.

The joke is that I’m explaining the process while actively doing it. The poem breaks its own lines, interrupts its own thoughts, calls attention to its metaphors, and then circles back to reveal that all those seemingly wandering pieces were connected by the same machine.

Sometimes I don’t choose the metaphor. I just follow where it takes me.

— Rowan Evans

The Metaphor Machine
Poetry by Rowan Evans

I’ll write a line in a way
that’ll make you pause—
then I’ll take that line
and break that line,
to break the thought—

then I sprinkle in the metaphors,
and this is really what I get meta for—

I talk about the moon
and the silver light,
the way it shimmers—
its image trembles
across the top
of dark water—
that’s one I’ve said before.
And I’ve said it lot,
but I’m not going to stop.

This is where the tides comes,
and there the tide goes—
because that’s how the tide works.

And the ocean—

this is a poem, I wrote…
you didn’t think
we were going to skip this one,
did you?

And the ocean,
it’s so polite—
the way it waves,
every time it sees my face.
It’s a familiar place,
I sit on the shoreline, often—
not in reality, but in my mind—
that’s where the thoughts soften.

Now, for the city streets—
the heat, and god—
that humidity, the way it clings.
You’d think I’d dream of…
somewhere less…
humid? But I digress,
it’s always love that I express
for the islands I haven’t touched yet.

If you’re following along—

I wrote a line
that made you pause—
then I took that line
and I broke that line—

and that broke the thought.

Then that’s where the pivot came,
I told you what I really went meta for.

It’s the metaphors.

Moon to tide,
tied to the ocean—
a shoreline or two,
next to the ocean blue—
then beaches to city streets,
it’s the same ones I walk in sleep.

Journey into the Hexverse

[Welcome to the Hexverse]
Step into the Hexverse—a poetic world where mythmaking, humor, rage, creativity, and confession collide, and darkness becomes something that can be reshaped into art.

[High Tide]
A short reflective poem about leaving, returning, and accepting the forces that pull us back—like the tide guided by the moon.

[Let Me Pacific]
A lyrical poem about sitting beside the Pacific Ocean and discovering that an enormous body of water can become a bridge between distant hearts. Through ocean imagery, wordplay, and reflections on California and the Philippines, Let Me Be Pacific explores how love and poetry can cross even the greatest distances.

[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.

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