Some poems arrive carrying trauma, existential questions, complicated metaphors, and enough symbolism to fill a cathedral.
This one showed up carrying a fucking pun.
Hedge Funds (Not My Fun) is deliberately stupid. I wanted to play with sound, names, word associations, and the increasingly questionable logic of a joke that refuses to die. Sometimes the page doesn’t need another emotional excavation—it just needs to have a little fun.
So yes, this is a poem about hedge funds.
No, I don’t actually have any.
And apparently, neither does my fun.
— Rowan Evans
The hedge has funds. The funds aren’t mine. Therefore, the fun remains tragically unfunded.
Hedge Funds (Not My Fun) Poetry by Rowan Evans
I think I’m so fucking funny—
I’ll make a Big Pun,
while lookin’ like a Pimp
C—but you can’t see me,
like my name is John
and my time is now—
or at least, I hope it is.
Because I’m trying to get my funds up,
yeah, I want to get my fun up—
so I stack my funds
as high as my hedges—
get it?
Hedge Fund.
That means the money isn’t mine—
so I’m stacking some funds high,
they’re just not my funds, and—
because they’re not my funds,
they do not fund my fun, man.
It’s Almost Like I Know What I’m Doing is a little self-audit that turns into a flex before I can stop it.
I started by wondering whether my writing had become too much swagger and not enough emotion—whether the ink was simply running free without anything underneath it. Then I remembered how long I’ve been doing this, where some of that rhythm came from, and why I learned to turn anger into cadence and pain into something that could make me laugh.
Maybe the swagger isn’t the absence of emotion.
Maybe it’s one of the ways I’ve learned to carry it.
This piece is me looking at the machinery behind my own writing and realizing that the things I sometimes question—rhythm, rhyme, comedy, aggression, timing, and instinct—aren’t accidents anymore.
They’re tools.
And apparently, after all these years, I might actually know how to use them.
— Rowan Evans
After twenty-three years of shaping ink, maybe the swagger isn’t accidental.
It’s Almost Like I Know What I’m Doing Poetry by Rowan Evans
It’s like my writing has become
all swagger, no emotion—
it’s like the ink is coastin’,
like the edge of the sea—
but there’s no tide to guide me.
So my lines run free—
sometimes that’s not a problem for me,
other times it feels like it ends tragically,
like I’m going to say some shit,
and make people mad at me—
but if it happens naturally,
I’ll take the consequences, happily.
When the switch flips
and my mind shifts—
I can feel the slow drip,
emotions begin to slip
and my thoughts trip—
trip up and stumble,
drop the ball—fumble.
It’s only round one,
get ready to rumble—
this is a battle,
a bit more than a scuffle,
slide my feet—shuffle.
I’ve got twenty-nine years
putting marks on paper—
twenty-three years
as a real ink shaper—
I’ve poured my heart into this,
my whole life has been ink-stained—
spent years translating pain,
nearly thirty years,
laying my rage on the page—
it started early—
I was maybe nine or ten,
getting bullied back then.
I hated the bullies, hated school too.
Hated the fact they thought
they were too cool—
too small to fight back,
but I could write—
so I could bite back.
Used my ink to launch an attack,
went full scale—
you see,
I cut my teeth on bars
and that’s why—
my lines go hard.
I started at nine
learning the legends rhymes—
y’all gon’ make me lose my mind,
until even I’m asking
what My Name Is…
Never mind. False alarm.
I found it—
it was inside rhyming,
learning comedic timing—
yeah, I took the rage
and taught it how
to joke its way
across the page—
whether happy or in pain.
All it changed is
how I worded some things,
it’s almost like—
I know what I’m doing.
Journey into the Hexverse
[New God With a Pen] A battle-poet power fantasy where Superman’s rage, Batman’s fear, Darkseid’s cosmic authority, and the Anti-Life Equation collide with rhyme, turning an ordinary pen into something worthy of New God status.
[Lessons Without Kindness] A reflection on learning self-respect from a relationship that changed—the lessons hidden in manipulation, silence, and loss, and the realization that you don’t have to shrink yourself to make someone else feel tall.
[The Sacred Timeline] From childhood stories about Dragon Ball Z, Power Rangers, and Pokémon to gothic cathedrals, ravens, roses, identity, healing, and experimentation, The Sacred Timeline traces how Rowan Evans’s relationship with the pen evolved across thirty-six years—and how the ink remained while the writer kept changing.
Mine just happens to contain an alarming number of moons, oceans, ravens, comic book characters, sports references, cartoons, and entirely too much ink.
People occasionally notice that I return to the same imagery over and over again. They’re right.
The funny thing is…
I’m usually the first person to notice.
This poem came from imagining an overly critical director sitting just off-camera, pausing every scene to point out my habits.
“Another moon?”
“Really? The ocean again?”
“We’re doing ravens today?”
It’s the internal voice every creative person develops after making enough work. The one that starts recognizing your patterns before anyone else does.
Sometimes it’s helpful.
Sometimes it’s insufferable.
The joke, of course, is that the director isn’t entirely wrong.
I do write about the moon a lot.
I do return to oceans, tides, dreams, and ravens.
I do compare things to comic books, cartoons, sports, horror movies, and whatever random piece of culture my brain decides belongs in the poem that day.
Because those things aren’t decorations.
They’re the language my mind naturally speaks.
The final section—”Music—10/10. No Notes.”—is probably the closest thing to surrender in the entire poem.
Apparently my inner critic has limits.
Music gets a free pass.
Everything else is fair game.
Including me.
— Rowan Evans
“Every writer has recurring motifs. Mine just happened to get their own director’s commentary.” 🎬🌙✍️
Director’s Commentary Poetry by Rowan Evans
The Moon—
Here we go again, another moon metaphor.
What is it this time?
The moon shimmering above the bay? A stand in for her beauty—
Ocean—
My favorite metaphor.
The one I’ve used thousands upon thousands of times before— written in thousands of lines, in a thousand different rhymes.
Hyperbole.
The Tide—
Yes, there it is— the final piece of this overused metaphor chain, you say it’s different but it’s all the same.
Same moon. over the same bay, and it shimmers in the same way.
It’s almost like the moon, ocean, and tide are all that exist inside that little mind.
Ravens—
So spooky. So gothic.
You write ravens like you shop exclusively at Hot Topic.
They’re messengers. They witness. And once upon a time you even made them a centerpiece.
You took that way too seriously back in your “modern-day Poe” era.
A modern-day Poe?
Ridiculous.
Sports—
You don’t even watch those.
Why are you writing metaphors for the bros?
You think you’re great? Yeah, you’re The Babe. 23 years and a Jordan joke— okay, Shohei.
Random Cartoon Reference—
Which character are you going to grab this time?
Which bit of nostalgia are you going to try and exploit?
Random references, litter the page— Powerpuff Girls, Doug and Dexter.
So what’s next?
Something more obscure, or more mainstream?
Comic Books—
Tropes.
Superheroes and capes.
Random character grab, used in a metaphor that barely makes sense—
like Bane for line breaks? What the “#%@$” was that?
I’ll give you Two-Face for fakes and snakes, because that one makes sense.
Music—
10/10. No Notes.
Journey into the Hexverse…
[Pointing Me Home] The final poem in the No Metaphor Left Behind trilogy explores dreams, hope, and belonging. Through moonlight, ocean tides, and quiet conversation, Pointing Me Home reflects on carrying hope long before reaching the place you call home.
[Chemical X] Chemical X explores the rapid, associative way one creative mind moves—from cartoons to sports, comic books to music—revealing that inspiration isn’t linear, but a collision of memory, humor, rhythm, and intuition.
[Crossing the Sea] A deeply personal poem about relocation, longing, and the realization that some truths naturally arrive through metaphor—even when we try to leave it behind.
[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.
[Frankenstein’s Monster (and I’m the Doctor)] Some poems are built to make a point. Others are built to reveal the mechanism. Frankenstein’s Monster (and I’m the Doctor) explores associative thinking, creative chaos, and the strange process of stitching disconnected ideas into something alive.
[Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3)] A moonlit shoreline, a rowboat full of ducks, a piggybank with no cents, and a confession hidden in plain sight. Ocean Waves (1, 4, 3) explores how humor, wordplay, and absurdity can become a side door to vulnerability when the truth feels too difficult to say directly.
[A Heart That Echoes in Another Language] A poetic journey through music across Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines, exploring how sound becomes identity, memory, and emotional geography.
[Global Takeover] What if home isn’t a place—but something you build from the music you love? Global Takeover blends sound, culture, and identity into one borderless space.
