And in Venice, spring!

priest manqué

Baron Corvo's pimping presence

passes by,

on the lookout for the right boys.

Oh che bel divertimento!

Thinking ahead, his desire

blooms like the last orchid

in a hothouse, blooms

while the catamites themselves,

downy dark or downy pale,

in all parts of the Rialto

loiter and languish

looking for close work

with gentlemen of a certain taste.

In the hurly-burly of old Venice

Corvo, drifting towards

the traffic along the Grand Canal,

looking, looking, O Tito Biondi!

The companion of choice,

merely a friend, he'd like you to think,

got a fillip of breeding

caught in Paris or Rome

and used to effect

in his gypsy bajours.

Bald head gleaming

under the blue balls

of a chancy bottega

Corvo stalks his prey,

dreaming of uninhibited

insertions, fondlings, gropings,

oh, those loamy-loined teen boys,

downy armpits sprouting tendrils

oh! oh!

meanwhile wanders

no priest he

his vocation long fated to fail

his Latin not tolerable

unnatural practices,

showy devotion, coram populo,

habitual bedwetter

artful inventor with no capital

not a pot to piss in

presses on to little success

a fine eccentric writer

who was respectfully ignored

and a pity, a pity,

died in the weeds of poverty.

Corvo's remains lie

in as much state

as could be tolerated,

dead in his bed

in an untidy Venice hotel

then removed

to the hospital mortuary

to await a final resting place.

Not at all surreal, really,

and it should be.

If he is there and why not,

Salvador Dali makes a face

through the window.

The sun shines as it does

on the fairy city of the heart

Byron knew

but heartless always

for those hard-up souls,

expatriates living on the dole,

on accidental kindness of countrymen;

wet petals exposed, vulnerable

to Venezia, Venezia

on the dark side of its beauty,

its shimmering waterlogged decay.

Early years

of the twentieth century

and China, discordant;

banditti of all stripes and persuasions

dealing death and disorder

in all directions

with bloody intent

for absolute power.

One furious face emerged

from all of this

standing firm and three-dimensional;

arbitrary, ruthless, prodigious,

we know him

or know what the books

make him to be,

Zhang Zongchang,

the Dogmeat General,

blown up by time's passage

at least

to a small-bore legend.

Let's start with Zhang's

Grimm-like fairy-tale parents;

father, head-shaver, trumpeter and drunkard

mother, exorciser, adulteress and witch;

too much heat from the get-go

for Zhang

to go anywhere but out.

He embarked

on a series of picaro adventures

showing himself talented, ruthless,

dangerous as a lion, wily as a fox

in the wilds of Manchuria and Harbin;

in turns, pickpocket, pimp,

bouncer, fossicker

rising to all-out banditry

and more or less

cleanup man and lord executioner

under the Qing green standard

and, as time passed and Fortune dictated,

changing sides here, there and everywhere,

becoming the most powerful warlord,

prime bandit generalissimo in China,

by all accounts

a brutal son of a bitch

blackguard and charmer

in a time of disarray

in the Middle Kingdom.

Those times

the people dismayed

and more than ready

for a half-literate warlord

who liked his casket

and his mother

along on the march.

What he did on the side,

those charming details we all love,

smoked Cuban Cohibas out of the box,

numbered his concubines, one, two, three,

easier remembering numbers

than a bunch of exotic names;

loved the Dogmeat game,

Pai Gow, to excess

and lost a passel of concubines

to his extravagantly bad play,

plunking down the common

coin of the realm,

piles of Mexican silver dollars,

beyond the measure

of Zhang's so-called Old Eighty-Six,

the rod of doom

as well as the rod of life;

"hello father," at least

one wise child knew to say.

A harum-scarum psychopath

with a big tiger smile

and a knife at your heart,

changing sides at the drop

of a hat or a general;

a following wind was what he preferred.

So that's that.

Pulling some kind of moral

from Zhang's course of life,

here's two questions

I'd like to ask:

Is having a good time

all the time

and bugger the consequences

a good thing?

And is serving yourself,

manibus plenis,

every blessed day

a bad thing?

Seems to be the same

in the all-seeing eye

of an indifferent universe;

from far far away over the eons

every life seen

with the same dead gaze.

In light of that

or based on his gut

Zhang lived it up

bang bang bang

and unlike most of his ilk

had the balls for the consequences.

And the common folk? The rest of us?

Whether we admired him, loved him,

loathed him, reviled him

he didn't care,

making his own life and legend

as he goes, bold as brass,

cao ni ma, fuck your mother,

I don't care, he said,

buckled his sash

and posed stern for the photographer

in full regalia;

a Maecenas for all and sundry,

poets, painters, drug lords, scribblers,

movie makers, courtesans, cabaret whores,

lavish and extravagant,

he gave with both hands

and three legs.

Eventually Zhang shot and killed,

petty revenge by somebody's nephew,

bu hao, not good,

his last refrain.

A quick and sudden death

is that so bad?

He had a grand old time,

not the worst thing to get out of life.

Ruthless and capable warlord

and bon vivant,

pleasuring in destruction and murder,

fine sport from his end of it and only human;

courtly manners when he felt like it

or the occasion demanded.

Let's face it,

being a good Confucian

all the time

can be dumb

and a life of rectitude

straight-up

is cold comfort.

In the end death comes,

our bodies go down,

blown away

like chaff before the wind.

Save yourself the trouble

of toeing the line

and be surprised

by the joy of living

your good life

the way you want;

may as well,

you'll pay at the end of the ride.

Zhang, your slaphappy poem

about Mount Tai upside down

or downside up,

what the hell's the difference

to us common folk?

You're there

making the mountain turn

and we are not.