No more ace to play

Voted by the Brits as the top break-up song of all time, Abba’s The Winner Takes It All is also one of my favorite ’70s-’80s syth-pop tunes, second only to Fleetwood Mac’s Dreams. Quite possibly, I’m moved by not just because of the naked, pain-laden, wistful lyrics, but by the acidic irony behind the song’s inception. Agnetha might be the chanteuse belting the words with all her passion and regret, but the tune was, in actual fact, written by her ex-husband, Bjorn, whom I can only surmise was drawing from his exacting grief as he wove both music and lyrics together.

Many times I’ve wondered how Agnetha could have felt as she sang her ex-husband’s creation onstage, over and again. Coud she have felt a twinge of guilt, a stab of blinding hypocrisy as she stood in front of the roaring crowd — knowing full well it was she, not Bjorn, who ought to be castigated?

Confessional Blather

The way you walked up to speak to me
was plainly fraught with terror.
You wouldn’t look at me in the eye.
I thought, maybe she’s made an error.

Your confession, frankly, took me by
surprise. It wasn’t so much the content
but the way you spoke as the way you walked,
betrayed just how you felt and what you meant.

I said,”Some parts of me are permanently
on loan to a timeshare, on an unfixed deposit,
I don’t know if they ever would return;
even then, I’d prefer to lock them in a broom closet

‘It’s not you, it’s me’, so the saying goes,
you should know I’m hopelessly enthralled by another.”
Shuffling on your cherry heels, you replied, chagrined
“Ah, sorry to hear that. Would you please excuse my blather?”

Mirror

I see weariness and cruelty
reflected in your insousciant skin,
unwavering. Not a substitution,

just a blase duplication
of a treachery in the mind.

Glittering black coals, unshuttered.
Gaunt, suet-sculpted planes, unmasked.

Impossible to touch.
Impossible to salute.
Impossible to reconsume.

Reflected in your grim, unholy skin,
the imminent beauty in the breakdown.