animals in the act

Sapiens

I was made in the shape of a man, with few exotic features;
neither beak nor paws, nor anything adventurous,
but my opposable ape thumbs
remind me that there are other things I may have been.

At night, I always feel less human,
like the darkness releases the wild;
the reservoir is filled again
but with a savage, seething current.
But as night recedes into the morning,
I freeze, now solid, frost-capped ice,
deception known to every human.
I expand beyond my animal constraints
and hairline fractures bloom in my beginnings.
I am no longer instincts and evolution;
I am more and more and somehow better
until night, when the myth is once again dispelled.

The power of expression seems to dull and darken
our understanding of the roots of our behavior,
those most basic processes, what we have come from;
I regret the loss of pure primitive midnight, where we were once beasts,
a template for raw existence, nothing more.