Christmas defeated Chanukah <br />once again last night <br />by a margin of three billion dollars <br />or so, but every time I hear <br />a Yiddish word like bupkes <br />in a movie (L.A. Confidential) <br />or when Oleg Cassini in that new play Jackie <br />calls a garment a shmatta, it's "good <br />for the Jews," as our parents used to say. <br />Meanwhile some things have <br />stayed the same; the drunken lout <br />in the street is still somebody's father. <br />Hey, kid, how does it feel to have a pop <br />that's a flop? And we had such good ideas <br />for changing the mental universe, if only <br />as a project in philosophy class, the one <br />I still dream about failing when I have <br />that dream everybody has, of being back <br />in college and needing this one course <br />to graduate, which I forgot to attend<br /><br />David Lehman<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/december-25/
