A Descent Into Darkness: An Audio Reading from Before The Day Kills The Night
What happens when the sun finally falls, and the night opens its arms? In Before The Day Kills The Night, I explore the spaces where monsters and humans meet, where the damned find their sanctuary, and the boundaries between good and evil blur into nothingness. In my latest video, I read seven poems that pull you deeper into the shadows, each one revealing another layer of this haunting world.
The reading opens with "Don’t Be Too Long," where the invitation to a vampire has already been made. All dangers—like rose bushes and sunlight—have been extinguished, and the beasts of the night have gathered to assist in the creature’s arrival. Wolves devour rivers, owls sing the night’s song, and butterflies drown the priests. Before the day kills the night, you feel the hunger of the undead beckoning.
We then descend into "Not Mine." The title itself speaks to the distance that depression or personality disorders create between the self and the world. In this poem, the familiar becomes alien. Notebooks filled with once-recognizable words now feel like they belong to a stranger. The trees outside, the rain, the night itself—everything that once soothed and belonged to the speaker is now foreign. “Not mine” echoes as the final refrain, a haunting reminder that the speaker’s identity has unraveled, leaving only fragments behind.
“Ideal Sinners” brings you to the gates of hell, where sinners are tormented—frozen like Lucifer in ice, burned by flames, judged by the world. But by the end, you realize that the true sinners are not the damned, but those who cast the stones. The condemned are not destroyed; they have survived, while their judges rot in their righteousness.
In "Red Blood," you walk beside a beast, a man whose presence leaves bloodstains in his wake. He could be a hero, a killer, or something in between. The world cannot bear to look at him, his wrath too great to hide. His blood spills over the snow, staining everything pure with the darkness he carries inside him.
“Dead Bug” drags you into a nightmare where war twists reality beyond recognition. The skies have lost their meaning, the stars no longer shine for those who waste their light. Beasts and shadows crawl from every corner, and life becomes a strange playground where the hanged men swing in the wind. The dead bug is not just an insect—it’s a symbol of a fallen human, crushed beneath the absurdity of this senseless world.
The tension rises in “Two Angels,” where love is tangled between holiness and sin. Two boys, angelic in appearance, wrapped in flowers and snakes. Are they messengers of heaven or demons from below? Their beauty, their embrace, transcends the need for labels, making them something pure in their ambiguity, untouchable in their devotion to one another.
Finally, we are baptized into the underworld in “The Baptism.” The journey takes us to the Asphodelus garden, where forgotten boys, suspended between life and death, reside in an eternal twilight. Like Peter Pan’s lost boys, they will never age, never return to the world of the living. The speaker joins them, baptized into something no longer human, sealed in the melancholy of eternal youth and lost innocence.
Excerpts/Summaries
“Don’t Be Too Long” (Excerpt):
"Fly over skeletons and flies,
at the pace of the owls who know the way.
Let the moon lick your soul,
while shadows burn deep into your eyes."
Summary: The speaker invites the vampire, extinguishing threats and calling on creatures of the night to aid in its arrival.“Not Mine” (Excerpt):
"The night that falls upon my dreams
is not the night I used to know."
Summary: In this poem, depression or personality disorders create a chasm between the self and the world. Everything that once belonged to the speaker—thoughts, objects, and memories—feels foreign and distant, as though from another life.“Ideal Sinners” (Excerpt):
"You froze our egos in bitter ice,
then spat venomous blue fire
over our bare, trembling bodies."
Summary: Condemned sinners survive the torments of hell, revealing the true evil in those who judged them.“Red Blood” (Excerpt):
"Red droplets stain the alabaster path as he breathes,
covering the wrath that lives within him under his long black coat."
Summary: A beastly figure, leaving a trail of blood and destruction, too powerful and vengeful for society to face.“Dead Bug” (Excerpt):
"The stars will not shine for the one
who wasted his hope on a dead bug."
Summary: A world turned upside down, where nightmares, war, and despair crush the sensitive and the fallen.“Two Angels” (Excerpt):
"Two angels,
their necks wrapped in the silent embrace of snakes,
bound together for eternity."
Summary: A depiction of love between two boys, angels adorned with both flowers and serpents, blurring the line between holiness and sin.“The Baptism” (Excerpt):
"In these waters, beneath this moon,
the baptism is not one of innocence—
but of forgetting."
Summary: The speaker is baptized into the world of the undead, joining lost boys in eternal youth, yet with a deep melancholy.
