So much of being human is nonhuman,

by which I mean I feel most humane

when reminded I’m animal, a bipedal ape,

what Frans de Waal called a bipolar ape.

What I’m really trying to say is

piloerection occurs whenever I hear

a tune with an acoustic guitar

in a minor key and a picking pattern

like that one ditty by that one duo

(the names of both I fail to recall),

whose short-lived popularity like

my brief week of middle-school fame

is now mostly forgettable. I loved the girl

with the locker next to mine, who loved

me back but asked me to keep our love

secret—I didn’t. She IM’d me that song

I fail to recall but still can feel because,

she said, somehow it reminded her of me.

What I’m really trying to say is

still the hair along my spine stands up

like this. And I don’t feel bigger

but smaller, as if this warmth is

not my own but one singular burn

of millennia of fire ignited here

and now by vestigial reflex.

At night, sometimes, nearing sleep,

I recall all the women I have loved.

Only a dozen or so knew my love,

only a handful loved me back.

Yet I loved them all the same, I think

(again, I fail to recall). And yet I feel

the same flames still warming. Teetering

on the edge of dream, I fall—a hypnic

jerk plunges me into the void

because my ancestors slept in trees.

What I’m really trying to say is maybe

the past is an unremembered, felt dream

playing over and over, again and again,  

in always-exploding variations of here

and now, by which I mean if you tune in

to the primal stillness of your wisdom

teeth, your appendix, a hiccup or a yawn,

still, still you can feel the heat.