Not much is known about MARCUS BALES, except that he lives and works in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and his work has not appeared in Poetry or The New Yorker. His books are 51 Poems and most recently Baleful Biographica. Reviews and information at http://tinyurl.com/jo8ek3r and https://tinyurl.com/2sv22yna

If Shakespeare Had Written “I Will Survive”

Abandoned by you, first I was afraid;
The days were lonely and the nights were long,
But soon each day and night’s slow-winding braid
Revealed myself to me and made me strong.
I am no longer chained in love with you.
You broke me with goodbye, but I survived,
And now won’t do what you expect me to
Because I found you here when I arrived,
You, with that sad look upon your face.
I should have got your key or changed the lock,
But, mended stronger at the broken place,
I can’t be hurt again by your fine talk.
Get out. I am re-built from my debris,
And save my love for one who loves just me.

If TS Eliot Had Written “I Will Survive”

Because I did not hope to love again
Because you tried to hurt me with goodbye
I no longer strive to find out why
Because I learned that men are only men
Desiring this one’s sword or that one’s pen
Exchanging lie for lie and eye for eye
I taught myself to cry and not to cry
Because I did not hope to love again.
The unchanged lock admits the changeless key
And now you’re back, that sad look on your face,
But you’re not welcome here within my space
Where someone else is loving only me.
This is the way it ends. This is the day.
This is the way it ends. Now go away.

If Edmund Spenser Had Written “I Will Survive”

The weary year your race to leave had run
Reduced me to the sum of all my fears.
You tried to break me with goodbye, which, done,
You laughed and left me to my broken tears.
You could not but pursue your wild careers,
Always chasing those you do not know,
Your depth of spirit thin as a veneer’s,
And shiny to protect your status quo.
Yet here you are with nothing more to show
Than only that sad look upon your face
Which I could not resist so long ago,
Displaying once again its languid grace.
But no. My lock won’t open to your key.
I’m loving one who’s loving only me.

If Rudyard Kipling Had Written “I Will Survive”

You knew that I was chained in love with you while you remained
Whatever you would ask for I’d comply.
I guess you tired of me since you said you didn’t love me
Then even tried to hurt me with goodbye.
I was terrified and lonely, I was lost and loved you only,
And in the aftermath and after-shock
I did a little drinking, though I didn’t do much thinking,
And forgot to take your key or change the lock.
That’s a lesson. And I’m learning it the hard way. Your returning
With that same sad look upon your face
Is more than inconvenient and I’m not inclined toward lenient
Since you hurt me standing in that very place.
You’re a rotten human being and a new love’s loving me and
You had best get out before I use this Mace.

If Wendy Cope Had Written “I Will Survive”

You were quite good fun until you tried
To break me with goodbye. I couldn’t cry
And then I couldn’t stop. How long I cried.
I thought that dehydration’s how I’d die.
And then when I had finally caught my breath
I thought I’d drink up all the wine that you
Had left, and maybe drink myself to death,
Then found you took the bloody corkscrew, too.
My heart has changed its lock, though sine qua now
You’re back with that sad look upon your face,
Assuming that I’m free and I’ll allow
You into my not thinking of you space.
I’m loving one who’s loving only me,
And nothing here again will fit your key.

If Edgar A. Guest Had Written “I Will Survive”

It took a heap o’ wickedness to break me with goodbye
A heap o’ cheatin’ meanness that you topped off with a lie
Y’ left me there alone and cryin’, not knowin’ what t’ do
An’ petrified that I could never make it without you.
I bleated like a hungry kid at how you did me wrong,
But cryin’ ain’t the way to make the mind and body strong.
I shoulda thought to change that lock or else to gitcher key
And woulda if I’d thought that you’d come back to bother me.
And here ye are again with that sad look upon yer face,
An’ lookin’ like you like the way that I redone the place.
But that ain’t gonna work no more. I’m takin’ back my key
‘Cause I am lovin’ someone else who’s lovin’ only me.
An’ you kin jes’ git out, yer comin’ back ain’t got no class,
Go on, git out, don’t let my screen-door hitcha in the ass.

If Dylan Thomas Had Written “I Will Survive”

Now as I was young and simple under the disco ball
Casting its rainbow spell and happy as the bass was loud,
Nothing warned me in the white-suit days, that you would leave me
And I would wake to a silent bed a youless shroud.
Oh I was young and simple the lockbound door and key unchanged
Till like a wanderer prodigal of the fatted calf
You’re here again that same look still upon your face
Green and golden glowing like the holy spring.
But darkling time allows in all our sad-faced facings
No reliving just a moon that’s always rising
Newly new and full of yet some other light
Though oh you glow and shimmer manly more than moonly
But no. Out, out the open door and leave that key
For someone else is singing in my chains like the sea.

If Dorothy Parker Had Written “I Will Survive”

One perfect shit is what you’ve always been.
I see that same sad look upon your face
But don’t think I will fall for that again,
How dare you let yourself into my place
Because I didn’t change the stupid lock
Assuming when you came I’d be so free
You wouldn’t have to bother with a knock?
What if someone else were here with me?
One perfect narcissist is what you are.
You think of me as furniture, at best,
For you to use and then, well, au revoir.
Oh, what the hell. Come in and get undressed,
My husband will be out for quite a bit.
At least you’ll make me come, you perfect shit.

If Edgar Allan Poe had written “I Will Survive”

Once upon the cocktail hour, dispatching
Not my first I heard a scratching, scratching
At my lock, a key that entered lightly,
“Who’s there?” I asked. I asked “Who’s there?” too brightly.
Planless, I could not imagine who
Might have a key. And then I saw you. You,
Who, leaving, tried to break me with goodbye,
You, that look upon your face that I
Could not resist back when I was in chains
In love, oh, you assuming love remains,
Assuming that for you I would be free.
But now there’s someone loving only me.
No, not today and no, not like before —
And not tomorrow. Never. Nevermore.

If John Masefield Had Written “I Will Survive”

You must have thought that I’d seize at that sad look upon your face,
And all you ask is a small smile, and a memory of grace;
And the rising claim, the outward arch, and the inward shaking,
And a soft sound at the throat’s base at the spasm breaking.
You must have brought all your keys again to unlock the familiar door,
For the old lock, the unchanged lock, with the key that worked before;
And all you ask is remembered heights of appeals complying,
Not the quick dump, the harsh jilt, and desperate crying.
I can’t go back to my knees again, to servicing your demands,
To the this way and the that way of your plans and your glands and your hands,
All you ask is loot and plunder, treasure to get and spend,
Not quiet sleep and a sweet dream in the arms of a friend.
And all I ask is a love who’s loving me for only me.
And all I know is you are not the one it will be.

If Philip Larkin Had Written “I Will Survive”

You fucked me up when I was young
By leaving. I was horrified
How in a moment you had flung
My love so casually aside.
And now you think you can return,
With that sad look upon your face,
Too late because you’ll only learn
That someone better took your place.
You’ll walk away unfazed at all
That anyone denied your claim,
And hit on someone else who’ll fall,
As I did, for your toxic game.
I was a trophy on your shelf.
Not any more. Go fuck yourself.

If Thomas Grey Had Written “I Will Survive”

When Covid tolled the knell of public fun
And you decided you were leaving me
I thought there’d never be another one,
And did not change the lock, or get your key.
Now you are here back in my private space
As if you know what I will say and do,
And you can still, that look upon your face,
Assume I am still lost in love with you.
But time has passed, and I have found I know
That wounds will mend, and brokenness rebuild,
That out of desperate pain new peace can grow,
And now my voice fills what your voice once filled.
I missed remembered pain, and you, one day.
Another came. Now you can go away.

If RS Gwynn Had Written “I Will Survive”

Old Gladys in her polyester pants
Can blast the hearts of target silhouettes,
Her eye and hands as steady as her stance.
And after, as she chain-smokes cigarettes,
She mutters of her daughter’s taste in men —
Especially one of them out of her past
Who tried to break her with goodbye, and when
He turned up things would sure get ugly fast.
Besides, she’s got another fella there
Who treats her well enough he won’t incur
The wrath of this particular mama bear,
Who seems content with loving only her.
And at her age, compared to what she’d get
In satisfaction, life in jail’s no threat.

If Elizabeth Browning Had Written “I Will Survive”

How do I love you? Well, not any more —
I love you? Not even to bread slice height
That has been toasted, buttered, rye or white,
And dropped the wrong side down upon the floor.
I love you like a mildew or a spore
Or pestilential fungal blastocyte
That makes one’s breath itself a mortal fight
And living life seem like a choking chore.
I love you? The one who made the try
To break me with goodbye, yet kept that key
Because you thought that I’d lay down and die
If you returned, assuming I’d be free?
Oh no — I snarl and spit, deny your lie,
And save my love for one who’s loving me.

If Robert Frost Had Written “I Will Survive”

I have been one loved for myself alone.
I have walked out in sun — and back in sun.
I have outwalked the saddest cry and moan

I have felt the fear of what was done
Come back to haunt what I had thought estranged
By sending off the one who was the one.

I have left the key untaken, the lock unchanged,
And though not bound, two paths diverge, and I —
I am again arranged and re-arranged

By one who tried to break me with good-bye.
Can that sad look upon their face atone
For all those nights betrayal made me cry?

But now I’ve grown beyond what I have known.
I have been one loved for myself alone.

If Ogden Nash Had Written “I Will Survive”

One place where popular songs should change their ways
And raise themselves up more into the range of art is by eschewing all cliches.
Like once a million years ago some poet dressed in uncured hide
Wrote for the first time that someone did them wrong but they grew strong and learned how to get along after some Ug or Wug had left and left them so afraid that they were petrified,
And thought that that was pretty good — and maybe it was, for its time,
But now all it’s really good for is as a means to get to ‘by my side’ because the meter got you there to where you are and needs a rhyme.
And knowing how to love has got nothing whatsoever to do with knowing that you’ll stay alive,
And even though you have announced that because you have a life to live and love to give, what a low bar it is after all to claim that that means you’ll survive.
When you left me you didn’t break my heart.
I didn’t spend a single night feeling sorry for myself and though I may have cried a bit I certainly didn’t do anything as extreme as fall apart.
And something that this sonnet is somewhat better for
Is how completely I’ve avoided any reference or allusion to that provocative lock and key metaphor.
And furthermore how boring it would be
To think I wanted or needed someone so narrow in their interests and shallow in their humanity as to be able to love only me.