Why I Will Not Make Love to You

Oh, don’t stand there, black and white, like
a mellifluously suave George Sanders in
the smoky half-light in the background in the haunt
and pull of war, film noir philanderer: the strong
and dark implicit pour of your imploring heart

would only mark the barest start of first conditions
for the ambience that I’d deem requisite for any
tryst. I’ll make another list. Today I rode
the subway in the city as if I had never ridden
it before: that is, I hadn’t ridden it before exactly

as I’d ridden it today, and I was absolutely
presciently aware for once that that’s the only way
of things: arrival simultaneous with a departure –
punctuated in the splayed array of every dinging
opening and shutting subway door – as if to quote

the Raven: “never more!” – not one experience
was a repeat. The city always does our bidding,
waiting, bleeding, sinning: we have been so many
of its generalities, exactitudes – we are in its
categories and its idiosyncratic stories: but we are

not on film, like Mr. Sanders, cannot implore the way
his filmic heart will always do as long as there’s
a DVD around to misconstrue the nature of
the True. We are doomed or blessed eternally to
“new.” That’s why I will not make love to you.


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