←

Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: modern gothic

  • Finish What You Started – A Poem About Transformation, Shadows, and Rebirth

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Some versions of yourself do not disappear quietly.

    Even after you’ve changed, even after you’ve tried to move forward, there are still old names, old mistakes, old selves that follow behind you like shadows.

    This piece came from thinking about transformation—not as a clean rebirth, but as something heavier.

    Something witnessed.

    The ravens in this poem aren’t meant to be enemies. They’re observers. Keepers of memory. Symbols of the parts of ourselves we can’t fully erase, no matter how badly we want to leave them behind.

    And the fire isn’t destruction alone.

    It’s momentum.

    Because sometimes growth doesn’t happen when you escape the past.

    Sometimes it happens when you finally walk through it.

    — Rowan Evans

    Figure walking through burning temple ruins beneath watching ravens
    The only way out is through.

    Finish What You Started
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Strike the match
    and light the flame—

    watch the past
    decay and end.

    I walk through temples
    while the ravens watch me.

    I feel their eyes upon me,
    following—

    every movement
    traced.

    They tally every sin I’ve carried,
    every name I’ve buried,
    every version of myself
    I tried to outgrow.

    They know the weight
    I drag behind me,
    the shadows I pretend
    I’ve already outrun.

    The flame behind me grows,
    licking at the stone,
    urging me forward—

    a reminder
    that the only way out
    is through.

    The ravens
    do not warn me back.

    They only tilt their heads,
    as if to say—

    go on…

    finish
    what you started.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    Previous:
    [The Shadow and the Spark]
    A psychologically charged free verse poem using Mortal Kombat imagery to explore anxiety, depression, identity, and the realization that survival matters more than victory.

    [East Knows My Name]
    A deeply introspective poem about emotional displacement, cultural disconnect, and feeling spiritually drawn toward a place far from where you were born.

    [Out of Sync]
    A reflective free verse poem about emotional displacement, shifting sleep cycles, and feeling spiritually drawn toward another side of the world.

    Upcoming:
    [Altars and Roses]
    A gothic free verse poem about poetic identity, recurring symbolism, devotion, and the quiet humanity beneath dramatic imagery.

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

  • Gospel in Crimson – A Gothic Love Poem of Devotion, Ink, and Obsession

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    Writing has never felt passive to me.

    It’s not just expression–it’s translation.

    There are moments where thoughts don’t feel like they belong entirely to me. Where something deeper takes shape, and my only role is to give it form… to let it exist outside of my head.

    This piece comes from that space.

    From the idea that creation can feel like ritual.
    That the page becomes an altar, the pen becomes a tool of release, and the act of writing becomes something closer to devotion than craft.

    Not an idea.

    Not to perfection.

    But to a presence that reshapes the way I think, feel, and create.

    — Rowan Evans

    Gothic writing desk with rose petals and deep red ink symbolizing poetic devotion and dark romance
    Some words aren’t written—they’re bled, offered, and left at the altar.

    Gospel in Crimson
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I gather rose petals—
    turn them into ink,
    red as the crimson
    in the veins of me.

    I write letters—
    never meant to send,
    penned in ink
    the color of crimson sin.

    I speak in fragments—
    stanzas, metaphors,
    symbols from within—

    my mind is a temple,
    an altar built for ritual.

    The pen is a knife,
    used to bleed
    every thought—
    straight from my brain
    to the page.

    It is my purpose—
    to spread the word
    of the Goddess I’ve found.

    A muse,
    profound.

    To your name,
    my tongue is bound.

    I speak your gospel.

    Journey into the Hexverse!

    [Lantern in the Room]
    A deeply introspective poem about confronting inner darkness, navigating past trauma, and finding grounding in love. Lantern in the Room explores fear, vulnerability, and the quiet strength it takes to face yourself.

    [Not Her—The Echoes]
    A poem about learning the difference between someone who is safe—and the echoes of those who weren’t.

    [The Quiet Inside the Noise]
    What happens when a restless mind finally quiets—not by silence, but by focusing on one person? The Quiet Inside the Noise explores love, fixation, and finding calm in connection.

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

  • Funeral for a Thirty-Six-Year-Old | A Gothic Birthday Poem by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem is a birthday rite, not a reckoning.

    I’ve always treated birthdays less like milestones and more like ceremonial thresholds—moments to shed a skin, laugh at the ghosts behind me, and step forward with intention. Funeral for a Thirty-Six-Year-Old isn’t about mourning age; it’s about staging its death so something sharper, freer, and more self-aware can take its place.

    Thirty-six feels less like getting older and more like arriving. I’m no longer interested in quiet gratitude or graceful humility—I wanted pageantry, drama, and a little irreverence. This piece is me honoring survival with style, embracing the absurdity of time, and celebrating the fact that I’m still here, still dangerous, still writing.

    If this is a funeral, it’s one where the guest of honor very much refuses to stay dead.

    A gothic figure rising from a velvet coffin in a moonlit mausoleum, symbolizing a theatrical celebration of turning thirty-six.
    Thirty-six isn’t an ending—it’s a resurrection with better lighting.

    Funeral for a Thirty-Six-Year-Old
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I rise from my velvet coffin,
    for birthdays are sacred rituals of vanity,
    thirty-six too perfect for a quiet exit.

    Cobwebs kiss my ankles
    as I stride the mausoleum of my life,
    counting skeletons I’ve danced with
    and candles I’ve lit in the name of style.

    The moon winks at me through shattered panes,
    celestial bodies admire
    a drama queen in full bloom—
    not wilted, not weary, theatrically immortal.

    I sip absinthe from a skull-shaped chalice,
    grinning at the reaper waiting impatiently,
    his scythe tapping to the rhythm of my heartbeat—
    shrug. He’s never been my type.

    Mirrors whisper secrets of my youthful decay,
    I laugh—lines are suggestions,
    wrinkles invitations to flair,
    every grey hair a medal for surviving
    without losing my mind… entirely.

    Birthday cake, molten lava,
    frosted with sarcasm, glittering regrets.
    I devour it with a ceremonial fork,
    toasting myself—
    who else deserves this gothic pageantry?

    The clock ticks, and I bow to time,
    not in surrender, but in acknowledgment:
    I am older, wiser, and infinitely more unhinged.
    let the world tremble at my theatricality—
    I have arrived.

    Candles gutter. Shadows shiver.
    In the mirror’s reflection, I wink—
    thirty-six has never looked this dangerous,
    this decadent, this deliciously insane.

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

  • Rite of Ink: Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    Introduction
    By Roo the Poet

    🌸 (Roo bouncing around, smiling.)

    Heeey, you’re heeere!
    Haha—yes, yes, YES… you found it.

    This is messy.
    This is wild.
    This is word soup with fangs and sparkles.

    🟠 Rowan’s giggling.
    🔴 B.D.’s growling.
    🟣 Hex is lurking.

    And me?
    I’m jumping up and down, waving my little knife, spilling ink everywhere,
    laughing like a sugar‑crazed tornado in a tutu.
    Maybe I’m plotting. Maybe I’m just playing.

    Read it if you want.
    Or don’t.
    I don’t care.
    But I’ll be watching.
    Always watching.

    Digital artwork of ink spilling from a quill, forming shadowy, magical shapes with purple, crimson, and blue tones, conveying chaos and mystical energy.
    Rite of Ink visualized: words as weapons, ink as magic, and chaos wrapped in gothic beauty.

    Rite of Ink
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    🟠 (Rowan takes center stage.)

    You say you write what you really live—
    but it reads like fantasy.
    I say I write a fantasy—
    but it reads like what I really live.

    Nobody believes what you’re saying, dawg,
    because honestly, your honesty sounds like a fraud.
    You say, this is my life though—
    and nobody buys what you’re sellin’, bro.

    I could write three poems about one conversation,
    say I made it all up, and still they see the life in it.
    You could write a whole poem about your life,
    and readers would still find lies in it.

    You could put your wife’s name in every rhyme,
    and still nobody believes she exists.
    I turn my muse into an archetype,
    and nobody questions whether she lives.

    Because my words are alive,
    and yours? Flat out lies.
    I write so well, I don’t even have to try—
    you write, and everybody asks… why?

    I could hide the woman I love’s name in plain sight…
    like Are you even reading this?
    I’m schooling you, you flunky,
    and still you think you can fuck with me?

    I live in my words,
    and they live back.
    Yours?
    Just echoes, gasping for breath.

    Let me rewind that back…
    I said I could hide her name in plain sight.
    Are you even reading this?
    I’m schooling you, you flunky,
    and still you think you can fuck with me?

    You think you’re on the same page?
    Don’t make me laugh—I’ll leave you shook.
    You’re not even in the same book.
    Don’t insult me.
    Don’t provoke me.
    Don’t test my rage.

    I’ll end up sayin’—
    B.D. get ’em.

    🔴 (B.D. steps from the shadows.)

    Bones snap. Blood goes cold.
    As the tone shifts, I enter the fold.
    My knife hums a pleasant song—
    pleasant for me, because you don’t know
    what you did wrong.

    You choke on smoke and sulfur.
    Blood curdles like spoiled milk.
    I do it for my own, homegrown culture,
    as my words cut through flesh like silk.

    Your blood like ink
    will spill across the page.
    Cold steel my pen,
    my words? Rage.

    And here comes Hex—
    she’s up next.

    🟣 (Hex materializes from nowhere.)

    Ashes to ashes, blood to blood,
    Eye of toad, and witch’s tongue.
    Tail of newt—the spell’s begun.
    You think you’re safe… so you don’t run.

    Safe is an illusion.
    When you write? A delusion.
    When I write?
    A rite.
    An earworm.
    A brain intrusion.

    I’ll twist your thoughts
    like silk spun—
    this isn’t personal,
    I’ll hex you for fun.

    So mote it be

    Step deeper into the shadows and discover the full breadth of my poetry in The Library of Ashes — an archive of ink-stained devotion, dark petals, and threshold poems that linger long after the last candle flickers. Visit The Library of Ashes →

  • Rebuild Me in Fire: A Neo-Gothic Poem of Sacred Ruin & Resurrection | Rowan Evans

    Rowan Evans

    ✦ Author’s Note ✦

    A companion to Blood Oath Between Witches, this piece is a spell of surrender and resurrection—a covenant forged between two souls unafraid to burn. It’s about sacred destruction, the devotion it takes to let someone see you shatter, and the holiness of being rebuilt in love’s fire. A poem for those who understand that ruin and reverence are often the same thing.

    Two shadowed figures surrounded by firelight and smoke, standing before a gothic altar as embers swirl between them.
    “Love remakes what it ruins. In the ashes, we are made divine again.” — Rowan Evans, Rebuild Me in Fire

    ✦ Invocation ✦

    Step close, where shadow and ember meet,
    where the night bends beneath our pulse.
    Leave fear at the threshold,
    bring only hands ready to craft and destroy.
    Here, devotion is a hammer,
    and surrender is sacred.
    Breathe the smoke, taste the ash,
    for every fragment of you is an altar waiting
    to be rebuilt in fire.

    Rebuild Me in Fire
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Break me, only if your hands can build temples from ruin.
    I am not afraid to shatter—
    glass is only dangerous when it’s left unclaimed.

    I will become the shape your soul remembers,
    if you promise to meet me there,
    where devotion bleeds into becoming.

    Unmake me, if you must—
    but do it gently,
    and with reverence.

    I will burn down everything I was
    to stand beside you in the dark,
    our sparks writing scripture across the smoke.

    You’ll be my ruin,
    and I’ll be your resurrection.
    Together, we’ll call it love—
    and the world…

    The world will call it blasphemy.

    ✦ Benediction ✦

    May the fire that consumes leave only sacred stone,
    the ruins of what once was,
    molded into the shape of us.
    May every crack, every scar, every ember
    be a hymn, a memory, a covenant.
    Walk forward, you and I,
    rebuilt, unafraid, eternal in the quiet heat
    of what only we have dared to call love.

    The Companion Piece

    [Blood Oath Between Witches | Dark Poetry by Rowan Evans]
    A dark, intoxicating poem of devotion, desire, and mystical bonds. Blood Oath Between Witches by Rowan Evans explores the sacred intensity of connection, lust, and reverence in a world of shadowed flames.

    Recent Pieces

    [I Just Want to Leave]
    A fierce declaration of exile and self-preservation, I Just Want to Leave is Rowan Evans’ neo-gothic confessional exploration of alienation, freedom, and the courage to choose oneself over societal expectations.

    [Letters Never Sent]
    A haunting, intimate poem exploring unsent letters, unspoken love, and the sacred ache of devotion kept in shadow. Letters Never Sent is a tender glimpse into the poet’s connection with their muse.