Flamingoes all pink and proud

at the Junior Museum & Zoo.

Kids & grandparents all aflutter

flocking to public feeding time

in a fluff-and-strut club of cute.

At this prehistoric playground

giant tortoise all dun and shell

indifferent to indifferent glances

steps to the beat of super-slo-mo

dines solo sans fans or fanfare.

And the personal and the political roil on roil on

and Greenland isn’t green but it’s melting so let’s buy it

Greenland where you spent 1969 on an Air Force base

— thanks to an 11th-hour draft-avoiding enlistment —

Thule Greenland in the northwest corner to be specific—

giving hourly radio checks to nuclear-armed pilots

Greenland where there’s no sun in sub-zero winter

Greenland where there’s all day all night sun in summer

where there were no females in summer fall winter spring

Greenland where you were remote and isolated and bored

got high on hashish & porn brought in by Danish civilians

Greenland where you were cozy-fuzzy safe and warm

in the frozen Arctic Circle a million miles away

from a sweaty deadly circle of Hell called Viet Nam.

Greenland isn’t green but it’s melting so let’s buy it

and the personal and the political roil on roil on.

Sure the rumors percolate like bitter beans

headlines scream extortion torture arson

bribes beatings murder but there’s no work

in 1930 and hunger haunts like Wrigley wind

but this soup’s real and thick and hot and tasty

it’ll get you through the day through the night

and who knows if those stories are true

and so what if he runs rum beer brothels

lives like a czar and eats like a hog

all you know all you see is right here this

real thick hot tasty soup is all you’ve got

it’ll get you through the day through the night.