Poems Written With A Borrowed Pen - Tom Paxton

Holdin' on till the morning comes

Holdin' a mug between two thumbs

I’m gonna pay for this coffee with some awful nerves

Writing the same old lines again

Using a borrowed ball-point pen

The poet mostly gets the poem he deserves

But poems written with a borrowed pen

Won’t bring you back to me again, oh darling

I’m stuck here for the rest of my life, oh darling

It’s so hard without you, day by day by day

Thinking about the best of times

Didn’t we hear the midnight chimes

Didn’t we grow together;

didn’t we have it all

Sometimes life can seem insane

You woke up in a little pain

Next thing the head-nurse wakes me with a midnight call

And poems written with a borrowed pen

Won’t bring you back to me again, oh darling

I’m stuck here for the rest of my life, oh, darling

It’s so hard without you, day by day by day

A hundred times a day I do familiar things

I start to read the paper and the telephone rings

I listen for your footsteps, wondering who it can be

Then the pain comes down like a blanket, there’s no

-one here but me

There’s no-one here but me

Reading the papers through again

Trouble for the president’s men

Revolutions out there, shaking the old regimes

Spilling coffee on the table top

I know these tears have got to stop

I know they see me as a man who lives in his dreams

But poems written with a borrowed pen

Won’t bring you back to me again, oh darling

I’m stuck here for the rest of my life, oh, darling

It’s so hard without you, day by day by day

A hundred times a day I do familiar things

I start to read the paper and the telephone rings

I listen for your footsteps, wondering who it can be

Then the pain comes down like a blanket, there’s no

-one here but me

There’s no-one here but me

Holding on till the morning comes

Holding a mug between two thumbs

I’m gonna pay for this coffee with some awful nerves

Writing the same old lines again

Using a borrowed ball-point pen

The poet mostly gets the poem he deserves

But poems written with a borrowed pen

Won’t bring you back to me again, oh darling

I’m stuck here for the rest of my life, oh, darling

It’s so hard without you, day by day by day

It’s so hard without you, day by day by da