Safari Global - Chapter 1

'there is something happening
but you don't know what it is
do you, Mr. Jones?' BDylan

Friday before the Christmas tuesday when everyone who is anyone will be with the people they love to celebrate consumerisms' biggest holiday. 'What's he doing for Chrithmath?' Everybody would like to know what everyone else is doing. Well, I don't know about everyone else. I can tell you how I am listening to the ol' Stereolab CD on Friday night and waiting to eat up my International calling card funds (Yummy. Yummy.) I don't know that that's so terribly interesting.... I could tell you about electronic forms and the claims department which uses them, yet somehow, I feel, that is a vastly different tale and, most definitely, one deserving of it's own story/poem beyond the scope of this simple vision of a modern guy tapping away at the laptop keys so as to not simply stare into the audio analyzer or to dream too deep of colors the music makes. I could most certainly be writing this in a corporate cafe and drinking a cup of joe. I don't believe, however, that that is the correct or proper tone for a tone poem tomcatting from the Union Loin's most toxic anti-hero, Agent Zero of the Embarcadero.

Agent Zero is the zero who schleps the shoe leather throughout this town checkin' out the feminine body parts for no particular reason but only to dream of the material it could produce, were it to be recorded in some passionate clutch unbeknownst to himself or the general public at large.

The lover is the only one, who could be, reborn as the zero. When the government gave him the job of spying into the tender and intricate place no man must know, Agent Zero accepted like a retarded, half-mad, idiot. It would taken a flock of she-goats to knock him off course. Alas, those impetuous days of healthy pursuit soon took on other dimensions of unwieldy perspective. The beer was heavy. Her ass was heavy. There's no way of getting out of it once the video cameras catch you knee deep in elbows and pierced toes.

The Zero is the zero. Bad choices and a penchant for gambling on Fate's more unattractive sisters proved to be the pot to stew our Zero into a jambalya styled man chowder. Now, with the jalapeno atoms scorching his hairy genitals, he has no one to implore for mercy. As scoundrels have been known to, for century upon centuries, Agent Zero places a series of collect calls to God. The CD is skipping like a fudge merchant from the Barbary Coast. No one is picking up that phone. Not even voicemail.

'No crime. No qualm.' his mind attempts to dismiss the realty of the very real gravitational pull of larger, stronger, stranger astrological influences upon his warped and fractured grip on what is real and what could get 'too real', without proper medication being smuggled in by a beautiful camel jocky named Sonja Pope.


'Roberto, what will happen when Mars gets blindsided like a shitsalad in a snowstorm? It's all about extraterrestrial terrorism!. To tell the truth, I wouldn't be surprised (like Gomer Pyle 'Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!') If Bush and his boyfriend, Bin Laden, weren't arkestrating the whole kit & kaboddle from the Antarctic research facility where no man goes & no woman returns.'

Ah, IPA! Or ERA or NRA or FTD! What's it mean when you can't even hold your skinny ass down on the planet because some bad ass asteroid has ripped a chunk out the face of Mars, like a pitbull with no sorrow. Then, who's got the bus fare? Who, mama noodles? Who?

Yes. I could have used the ctrl+c & ctrl+v functions to build it like an art school bitch who might give you a case from Northport after sleeping with ugly, overwieght, bald, Nihilist rockstar wannabes. I could've went that route. You, my dear consumer, are paying high dollars to the boys from the lambda house to tell you why you are so stupid and how they could help you, for an extravagant fee, get over yourself and your lack of common knowledge and/or vision.

Like some lady told me,... she had to watch her carbs or her ass would mushroom to true organic proportions. 'What's the problem, lady? If that's who you are... be that thing. Be the best thing. Be the ONLY thing. Or be a thing in a series of things. It doesn't really matter in the long run. Trust me on this one,... God has an excellent sense of humor.' so spoke the Agent with a zero in his designation. Not a double zero, mind you. A single zero. Agent Zero. The way the Hindus would have wanted it.

The people had been busy building a God. A huge, technological affirmation of how worthy they are to be loved. With all their shortcomings, all their detestable stenchry, with all their masks and floral underwear. 'My God... the 'REAL' God gave me this huge package of meat to display on the inner net!' 'God gave us plastic surgeons to prove how beautiful and worthy we are.' 'God finally gave us a credit card with low interest rates!' 'God gave us this music.' "Forget the conspiracy crap, Agent Zero. We have a job to do. God help us if we screw this one up." You have got to serve somebody. Even if your name is Agent Zero. Even if you live and work in the Embarcadero. That's the way things is.

Agent Zero takes it in vain. A world music classic is streaming through his ragtop. Wind is blowing his hair like a one legged barber in Little Saigon. He rolls with the flow. On the radio playing at the end of the hall 'All we are is dust in the wind' probably from the wacked out Yoga lady or the smoked out security guard from Afrika. Either way. "It's one of one and two of two. Close on the sides. Clean on the neck."
"Chould I put the razor on the back of your neck?"
"It won't matter either way in a couple of weeks."
"say, mister,... jew sound like you're knowin' 'bout someting. I am only El Barbero. I ain't too smart. You got sometin to tell me?"
"I can't say too much, friend. Maybe I've said too much already... If you've got some family,... tu familia! No?"
"Si. Si. My family. Yo comprendo, senor."
"The best thing you could possibly do for those people is run to them. RIGHT NOW! I mean, after you finish my hair. There is something happening but if I dare breathe a word of it,... To ANY-BODY, we would all be systematically snuffed out by the US government. I'm only telling you this so you have a chance." Zero points at a Polaroid scotch taped to the barber's mirror "Take that little girl and kiss her like you've never kissed her before. That's my tip for you."
"You want me to kiss my wife's cousin? He's fifty years old and in la clinica psicopatica de Inglenterra. He is a very dangerous man. Don't be fooled be his prepubescent good looks, senor. He is an electromagnetic madman. Once, he even made me a present of a flaming dog turd! No, senor. I will not kiss him as if he were my daughter. Not for you or all the technological threats this world has to offer. I am a man and a barbero but there are somethings I just won't do."
"The point I am trying to make to you, my friend, is that the shit is going to hit the fan in a very large amounts and soon. Be prepared. That's all I am saying to you. Do you want to see your entire family consumed in a fiery natural catastrophe... OR worse to be left to the roving hordes of mutant rapists that will sour this scorched earth looking to consume anything with a pulse? Is that what you want!" Agent Zero jumps out of the barber's chair and throws off his protective smock "Well,... If that's the way you want it Senor Barbero..." Zero pulls open the frontdoor "You just made my shitlist!"
"But Senor,..."
Zero pulls out a wad of one dollar bills and throws them into the barber shop as he huffs off in hot footed fashion through the strip mall parking lot.
"Your hair..."