Old-Timer's Disease Poem by Donal Mahoney

Under his pillow he keeps
a pistol not to shoot the man
coming through the window
with a bazooka at midnight
and waking the wife who later
asks him why he shot the burglar
instead of asking him what he wanted.
It might have been something she
planned to give to Goodwill anyway.
He keeps the pistol under his pillow

to take into dreams that wake him
every night in Cinemascope
where he again is the lead actor
in films 50 years ago surrounded by
lesser men in supporting roles
who drove him nuts when he was
young and handsome and now
they’re back again because they heard
he has Old-Timers Disease
and they want to badger him

about their wives who chased him
all over Hollywood on Oscar Night.
They’re mopes, he tells his wife,
who never had a lead role, mopes
who would have been shot on set
if he hadn’t feared execution
but now in his dreams every night
these mopes had better duck.
The worst sentence he can get is
dreams for life without parole.