Lyrics Tom Paxton – Poems Written With A Borrowed Pen

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