Urban Lucubration

The Academic aspires to transform a thirst for action into a thirst for knowledge. Learning is able to forestall, if only for a little while.

Perhaps if he can immerse himself in the darkest, arcane, most depraved facets of human nature willingly; if he can engage the wicked and the vile with academic innocence, it can be forestalled and possibly, even eliminated.

If he shines brilliant enough, vibrant and ablaze with insight in his study, he may be able to divert attention from concealed matches in his sleeve. He can convince his colleagues and wise men that, he too, is disgusted with the depraved dark.

He is fearful; makes every attempt to tame his nature. It snarls and tempts, never with force but with compassion and reason. The entity knows him best.

When the sun is ablaze he provides empirical standards for morality, but at night he watches. The teacher becomes the taught. He observes silently, with predatory restraint; bides his time. He hopes it never comes, but he bides.

If he casts himself wide; proclaims publicly a fascination with the dark, they will overlook him. Foolish, curious, intellectually pure, perhaps, but not the same. He is an observer, they say.  The sting of smoke in his lungs as he lets the match fall deftly into the holy dark.


It burns brightly.