Agent Provocateur

AGENT PROVOCATEUR

Hot Summer night in Paris

Shadow of the Champs Elysee

Nervous little man in a homburg

Knows just how much is to be paid

Laundered American dollars

Small bills all wrinkled and worn

Killer microdot on a cheap fountain pen

Lightening bolt in a perpetual storm...

And some maniac from the Third World

Will die in his sleep tomorrow night

And his fee will be spent on five star hotels

And other worldly delights

Oh, the man in the kid leather trench coat

Knows only drugs exquisitely pure

And he goes by one name in the underground

Agent Provocateur

Crowded hashish parlour in Katmandu

Two men look slightly out of place

One man twitches like a nervous cat

The other holds a stone silent face

And both know well the implications

Of the guarded words they speak

The request is made in Moscow Russian

The acknowledgement in guttersnipe Greek...

And somewhere on the coast of New England

A stash of heroin is planted inside

The wall safe of a bright young senator

Who’s stunning future must be denied

And the man in the black silk Armani suit

Knows who must die and who must endure

He holds the key to so many doors

Agent Provocateur

He never carries a gun or a knife

He never writes anything down

He never leaves a hint of his history

Let alone where he might be found

And he’s loved a thousand beauties

These past thousand nights to be sure

He could destroy us all with a well placed lie

Agent Provocateur

A strip joint in Frisco Chinatown

Where the women strip right to the bone

Where any pair of strangers in the hungry crowd

Can always be completely alone

Where envelopes are exchanged in the dark

By men who ask no questions at all

Where discretion and fear are the names of the game

And any slip can mean a deadly fall...

And somewhere down in Venezuela

A cache of M-16 rifles disappear

And some Latino puppet is targeted

For guerrilla ambush later this year

And the man in the light sunglasses is sick

With a disease that has no cure

And he’ll live like a King in this jungle of sin

Agent Provocateur

He never carries a gun or a knife

He never writes anything down

He never leaves a hint of his history

Let alone where he might be found

He’s crippled more men than the medieval plagues

He lives so fast and so sure

But his Karma will lead him to hell some day

Agent Provocateur

Jim Murray is a writer, blogger and poet who lives in Canada but not in an igloo.