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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: philosophical poetry

  • Schrödinger’s Person | A Poem About Presence, Perception, and Existing Between States

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem began with a phrase.

    “Schrödinger’s Person.”

    The moment it entered my mind, I laughed.

    Then I realized it wasn’t really a joke.

    I’ve always been fascinated by the spaces between things.

    Between sleeping and waking.

    Between leaving and arriving.

    Between being understood and merely being seen.

    The famous thought experiment gave me a metaphor, but the poem isn’t really about quantum mechanics.

    It’s about perception.

    There are moments when I feel as though I exist in two places at once.

    One version of me is moving through the ordinary world.

    The other exists inside the minds of the people who know me, read my work, remember me, or think about me.

    Neither version is false.

    They’re simply different ways of existing.

    I think writers become especially aware of this.

    Our words continue living in places we’ll never visit, meeting people we’ll never meet.

    A poem can be read years after it’s written.

    A thought can continue existing long after the thinker has moved on.

    That creates a strange feeling.

    Part of you is always somewhere else.

    The final lines carry the emotional truth of the piece.

    Not that I cease to exist when no one is looking.

    Only that being perceived is one of the ways we feel most alive.

    Maybe that’s true for all of us.

    Maybe every human being exists in more than one state at once.

    The self we know.

    And the self that lives in someone else’s memory.

    — Rowan Evans

    A solitary figure appears between two overlapping realities, symbolizing existing in multiple states at once.
    Sometimes existence feels less like certainty and more like possibility.

    Schrödinger’s Person
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’m drifting somewhere
    in the in-between—
    space is liminal here.
    This is where people go
    to disappear—
    you must exist
    with the fear.

    It’s like I’m here
    but I’m not—
    I’m somewhere else too.
    It’s like I exist—
    in two states
    at the same time.

    I am Schrödinger’s Person.

    You see—
    that sounds more dramatic
    than it is,
    I just mean—
    when you perceive me
    is when I live.

    Not that I don’t
    without you—
    because I do,
    but I really don’t want to.

    You see—
    the two states
    I exist in,
    here…

    and there.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Returning to My Bones]
    Some dreams fade the moment we wake. Others leave behind emotions that linger long after reality returns. Returning to My Bones explores the strange grief of leaving a dream that felt real enough to matter.

    [Before My Feet Touch the Floor]
    What happens when your dreams feel more real than your waking life? Before My Feet Touch the Floor explores the strange grief of waking up, the lingering memory of dream selves, and the quiet question of which version of us is truly real.

    [Just Beyond Waking]
    A street that feels familiar. A life that hasn’t happened yet. Just Beyond Waking explores the fragile space between dreams, memory, longing, and the quiet feeling that some futures are already waiting for us.

    [The Needle Doesn’t Point North]
    “The Needle Doesn’t Point North” is a deeply personal free verse poem about displacement, identity, and spending a lifetime feeling emotionally disconnected from the place you were born while being drawn toward distant shores.

    [The Streets I Walk When I Sleep]
    “The Streets I Walk When I Sleep” is a deeply intimate free verse poem about recurring dreams, emotional connection, longing across distance, and the strange feeling of remembering places and moments that have never happened in waking life.

    [Separate Timelines]
    “Separate Timelines” is a surreal and deeply introspective free verse poem about emotional distance, time zones, vulnerability, and the fear of losing a connection that already feels meaningful before the words are ever spoken aloud.

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

  • Lone Wolf Theology | A Poem About Freedom, Identity & Self-Authorship

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece started as a joke.

    Or at least, it started with the energy of one.

    I was playing with the idea of a character moving through different fictional universes and refusing every invitation offered to them. No Justice League. No Avengers. No X-Men. No Jedi Order. No chosen destiny. No sacred prophecy.

    Just refusal.

    But as I kept writing, something else emerged.

    The more references I added, the less the poem became about superheroes and the more it became about autonomy.

    Because beneath every fictional universe is usually the same question:

    Who decides who you are?

    A team? A title? A destiny? A prophecy? A god? A system?

    Or you?

    That’s where the title comes from.

    “Lone Wolf Theology” isn’t really about isolation. It’s about self-authorship.

    Not the rejection of connection, but the rejection of surrendering your identity to something external. The refusal to let institutions, expectations, labels, or inherited narratives become the sole authority over your life.

    The superheroes, anti-heroes, and mythic references serve as modern archetypes here. They represent power, belonging, destiny, responsibility, faith, rebellion, and purpose. The speaker moves through those worlds, not because they reject what those symbols represent, but because they refuse to let any one of them define them completely.

    At its core, this piece is about choosing your own path.

    Not because it is easier.

    Not because it guarantees success.

    But because there is something sacred about deciding for yourself who you will become.

    And perhaps that is the real theology hidden beneath all the comic books, capes, and cosmic references:

    Freedom is a practice.

    A choice made repeatedly.

    A vow renewed every time the world tries to tell you who you should be.

    — Rowan Evans

    A solitary figure standing on a cliff beneath a star-filled sky surrounded by symbols of mythology, destiny, and freedom.
    No prophecy. No chosen order. No inherited destiny. Only the road ahead and the freedom to decide who you become.

    Lone Wolf Theology
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I’m a lone wolf, anti‑hero—
    Punisher psychology,
    Frank Castle reality,
    and Deadpool’s mentality.

    Yeah, that’s the fucking recipe.

    Fuck the League (Justice!)
    I don’t need no team,
    there are no Avengers around me.

    I am the evolution of man,
    no X‑Gene. No X team
    in this rhyme scheme.

    I don’t need a Bat‑Signal,
    I light up my own sky.
    Tell Stark I don’t need a suit—
    I’m built different, that’s why.

    Tell Logan I don’t need claws,
    I cut deep with my words.
    Tell Thor I don’t need hammers
    to make thunder heard.

    Fantastic Four?
    I’m fantastic solo.
    Guardians of the Galaxy?
    I guard galaxies dolo.

    Teen Titans?
    I’ve been grown since birth.
    Suicide Squad?
    I don’t need a squad to put you in the dirt.

    Lantern Corps?
    I don’t need a ring to shine.
    I’m the willpower,
    the fear,
    the rage—
    all combined.

    I don’t run with the Speed Force,
    I outrun it.
    Flash chasin’ lightning—
    I become it.

    No timeline can hold me,
    no paradox breaks me.
    Barry hit the wall of time—
    I run through it.

    Spider‑Verse?
    I don’t need a web to connect.
    I cut every thread
    and still command respect.

    Tell Parker I don’t need
    “great power” speeches.
    Tell Miles I don’t need
    a leap of faith to reach this.

    Venom? Carnage?
    I don’t fear their spawn.
    Symbiotes whisper to hosts—
    to me, they speak in song.

    I wear darkness like armor,
    I don’t need it to cling.
    I’m the wolf in the shadows—
    they’re just wearing the skin.

    And the Jedi Order?
    Please.
    I don’t need a council
    to tell me what peace is.

    I don’t need a saber
    to carve out my path.
    I don’t need the Force—
    I am the aftermath.

    No light side.
    No dark side.
    Just my side.
    My creed.
    My theology.

    The lone wolf
    doesn’t join orders—
    he creates one
    by being free.

    In the end,
    there is no order to join,
    no destiny to inherit,
    no prophecy to fulfill.

    There is only the road,
    the breath,
    the choice to rise
    when no one is watching.

    Freedom is not a gift—
    it is a vow whispered in the dark.
    And I keep it.
    Always.

    So write this
    in the margins of every myth:
    I owe nothing to the crowns of men
    or the councils of gods.

    I walk the line between fate and defiance,
    and I do not break—
    I bend the world around me.

    If destiny comes calling,
    tell it to knock louder.
    I don’t follow prophecy.
    I make it bleed
    until it follows me.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [L Words & Heart]
    A playful, self-aware poem about love, longing, loyalty, and the quiet ways another person can reshape our inner world. What begins as humor slowly reveals a heartfelt confession about affection, imagination, and the faces that linger in our dreams.

    [Just Beyond Waking]
    A street that feels familiar. A life that hasn’t happened yet. Just Beyond Waking explores the fragile space between dreams, memory, longing, and the quiet feeling that some futures are already waiting for us.

    [Twin Suns, Sister Moons]
    A poem about distance, longing, and the quiet pull of someone who lives beneath a different sky. Between twin suns and sister moons, the heart keeps reaching for home.

    [It’s You I Choose]
    A poem about devotion, vulnerability, and the quiet decision to stay. Sometimes love isn’t certainty—it is choosing someone anyway.

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

  • Before We Created the Labels | A Mythic Poem About Division & Human Unity

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece began with an image:

    a ritual repeated so many times that the people performing it stopped questioning the structure around it.

    At first, I thought I was writing horror.

    Ancient gods. Sacred chants. A collapsing building.

    But somewhere in the middle of the piece, the emotional center shifted.

    The horror was no longer the gods returning.

    It was what they returned to.

    This poem is ultimately about separation—how humanity continuously divides itself into categories, tribes, borders, identities, ideologies, and opposing sides. Not because difference itself is wrong, but because we so often transform difference into distance.

    Into hierarchy.
    Into conflict.
    Into “us” and “them.”

    The gods in this piece are intentionally left undescribed because they are less important as individuals and more important as witnesses. They remember humanity before those divisions hardened into walls.

    Before labels stopped being descriptive and started becoming weapons.

    And importantly: this piece is not arguing against culture, identity, language, or individuality. Those differences are part of what make humanity beautiful. The tragedy is not diversity—it’s disconnection.

    The collapse in this poem is symbolic.

    Not the destruction of difference, but the destruction of the structures that keep people separated from one another.

    And beneath all the mythology, rituals, and ancient imagery, there is a quieter question lingering underneath it all:

    What would humanity look like if we learned to see each other before the labels again?

    — Rowan Evans

    An ancient ritual chamber collapsing as mysterious godlike figures emerge while frightened worshippers look on.
    The horror was never the gods returning—it was the world they returned to.

    Before We Created the Labels
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    Each footstep
    echoed through the dark,
    the only sound
    to pierce the veil of silence.

    One by one,
    they filed into the room—

    each taking their place,
    as though they’d done this
    a thousand times.

    As the final of the covenant
    found their mark—

    they began to chant
    in ancient tongues.
    Languages of old,
    long forgotten to the world.

    The air in the room
    began to change—

    and it wasn’t humidity’s game.

    A presence became clear,
    even with no form to see.

    Their chants continue
    in a sacred chorus,
    as they call
    ancient gods forth.

    Air shimmered
    and walls shook,
    foundation cracks—

    and the air
    grew thicker still.

    Voices grew quiet,
    the chanting fading low—

    wood creaks,
    cracks expand.

    The room filled
    with whispers,
    voices from everywhere
    and nowhere—

    all at one time.

    As the whispers
    grew in volume,
    becoming booming
    shouts.

    Buildings shook,
    foundations shifted
    and the ground
    gives out.

    Fear filled—
    eyes of the covenant.

    A ritual done
    a thousand times,
    and a thousand times
    the gods would come—

    a sacrifice would be made,
    but the rules had changed.

    The building
    begins to come down,
    as the covenant runs out.

    Now, the gods unconfined—
    can see the world
    they left behind,
    for the first time.

    It wasn’t with judgement—
    it was grief,
    because they saw the cracks
    and fractures,
    the tragic divides.

    They remember a time,
    when their creation—
    was all one.

    Before we created
    the labels to divide.

    As they looked around
    at what the world
    had become—

    a series of lines
    separating sides.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [The Unkindness Descends]
    “The Unkindness Descends” is a Gothic symbolic poem exploring collapse, transformation, and the unsettling experience of being witnessed during moments of unraveling. Through raven imagery, ambiguity, and ritualistic atmosphere, the poem invites multiple interpretations—spiritual, psychological, ominous, or transformative.

    [I Write Cathedrals]
    “I Write Cathedrals” explores faith, doubt, belonging, and the search for meaning beyond certainty. Through Gothic spiritual imagery and confessional reflection, the poem examines how writing can become a sacred space for questioning, wonder, and the people who feel displaced by traditional structures of belief.

    [Drought Resistant]
    “Drought Resistant” is a confessional poem about growing up poor in California’s Central Valley—where triple-digit heat, EBT cycles, dry ramen, and hard landscapes become part of emotional memory. Blending humor, slang, and working-class reflection, the poem explores survival, regional identity, and complicated love for the place that shaped you.

    [Escaped to the Page]
    “Escaped to the Page” is a confessional meta-poem about individuality, artistic identity, and surviving through writing. Blending sharp confidence with emotional vulnerability, the poem explores the difference between shared labels and lived experience—and the ways art becomes inseparable from the life behind it.

    [Ink as a Second Mouth]
    “Ink as a Second Mouth” explores the distance between thought and speech, and the ways writing can become a form of survival, continuity, and self-translation. Through confessional imagery and reflections on growth, identity, and articulation, the poem examines what it means to keep becoming through language.

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

  • I Write Cathedrals | A Poem About Faith, Doubt & Sacred Misfits

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece is not about mocking faith.

    It’s about the difference between faith and certainty.

    Growing up around religion, I was often taught belief through absolutes. Questions were treated like weakness sometimes, uncertainty treated like danger. But the older I got, the more I realized that questioning was never the opposite of spirituality for me—it was part of it.

    Because if faith exists in the absence of proof, then certainty and faith cannot fully occupy the same space. Certainty closes the door. Faith leaves room for the unknown.

    That tension shaped this poem.

    Over time, I stopped seeing writing as separate from spirituality. The language changed, the framework changed, but the emotional instinct remained the same. I still seek meaning. I still seek connection. I still seek reverence. I just no longer place those things exclusively inside organized religion.

    That’s where the cathedral imagery comes from.

    When I say “I write cathedrals,” I mean that poetry became the place where I rebuilt my sense of the sacred. Not through doctrine, but through honesty. Through confession. Through empathy. Through creating spaces where brokenness doesn’t disqualify someone from belonging.

    The “sacred misfits” and “luminous heretics” in this piece are the people who exist outside easy categorization. The people who question. The people who feel spiritually displaced. The people who were told they were too much, too different, too doubtful, too strange to belong cleanly inside traditional structures.

    This poem is for them too.

    And ultimately, this piece isn’t arguing that one worldview is more beautiful than another. In fact, one of the most important lines to me is:

    “Both are beautiful.”

    Because whether someone sees divine creation or cosmic coincidence, I still think wonder itself matters.

    Wonder is sacred enough for me.

    — Rowan Evans

    A writer standing inside a dim Gothic cathedral surrounded by candles and handwritten poetry pages.
    If faith leaves room for the unknown, then poetry became the place where I learned to live inside the questions.

    I Write Cathedrals
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    I used to pray in churches,
    now I write cathedrals
    with broken compass needles
    dipped in ink—
    the direction they point
    ought to make you think.

    In church they say
    faith is necessary—
    but they talked
    with such certainty.

    It never made sense to me.

    Faith is the belief
    in the absence of evidence.

    Certainty and faith,
    cannot co-exist.
    They contradict.

    I had questions—
    about faith,
    about belonging.

    Was I wrong
    for longing—
    for asking for more?

    They said I should be grateful
    for scraps on the floor.
    Miracles. Where?

    I didn’t see the proof anymore,
    didn’t have faith in what I missed.

    And if you believe?
    That’s fine—
    your journey, isn’t mine.

    Just don’t push
    your faith on me.

    You look around,
    see God’s creation.
    I look around
    at a series of
    happy accidents.

    Both are beautiful.

    You can continue
    to pray in your churches,
    I’ll continue penning cathedrals—
    building altars
    to the broken and forgotten,
    the outcast just like me.

    Sacred misfits,
    and the luminous heretics—

    all are welcome here.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Drought Resistant]
    “Drought Resistant” is a confessional poem about growing up poor in California’s Central Valley—where triple-digit heat, EBT cycles, dry ramen, and hard landscapes become part of emotional memory. Blending humor, slang, and working-class reflection, the poem explores survival, regional identity, and complicated love for the place that shaped you.

    [Escaped to the Page]
    “Escaped to the Page” is a confessional meta-poem about individuality, artistic identity, and surviving through writing. Blending sharp confidence with emotional vulnerability, the poem explores the difference between shared labels and lived experience—and the ways art becomes inseparable from the life behind it.

    [Ink as a Second Mouth]
    “Ink as a Second Mouth” explores the distance between thought and speech, and the ways writing can become a form of survival, continuity, and self-translation. Through confessional imagery and reflections on growth, identity, and articulation, the poem examines what it means to keep becoming through language.0

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

  • A Balance Found – A Short Poem About Identity, Duality, and Self-Acceptance

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This poem was written on February 19th as a quiet reflection on duality within the self. We are often told to choose between parts of who we are – light or shadow, reason or imagination, strength or softness. But real wholeness comes from learning both can exist at once.

    A Balance Found is about accepting the full spectrum of who we are. The dreamer and the observer. The light and the shade. Not as opposing forces, but as pieces of the same soul that finally learns to stand whole.

    — Rowan Evans

    A symbolic image of a person standing between light and shadow, representing balance between different parts of the self.
    Finding harmony between light and shadow within the self.

    A Balance Found
    Poetry by Rowan Evans
    (written February 19th, 2025)

    Ink and shadow, light and shade,
    Both have their place, both were made.
    One to dream, one to see,
    And I stand whole—both parts of me.

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