When John Henry was a little baby
Sitting on his papa's knee
He took a No. 2 pencil and a yellow legal pad
He said A writer is all I want to be Lord Lord
A writer is all I want to be.
John Henry was an English major
And poetry was his line
And he sat by the window with his yellow legal pad
And he wrote one sentence at a time Lord Lord
He sat and wrote poems like a man.
One day the teacher says to John Henry
No more writing by hand
I got a laptop computer with a big hard drive
It can download data like a man Lord Lord
It can download data like a man.
John Henry told his teacher
"I'll challenge your laptop to a test.
I'll take the paper and my good old No. 2
And we'll see who writes it best Lord Lord
We'll see who writes it best.
The English Department all gathered round
The two men sat on a stage
The teacher booted up his black laptop,
And John Henry put his pencil to the page, Lord, Lord,
John Henry put his pencil to the page.
The starter said Go and they started to write,
You could hear that laptop fly
John Henry sat with a smile on his face,
I'll write me a sonnet or I'll die, Lord, Lord,
I'll write me a sonnet or I'll die.
The pencil moved on the paper
In iambic pentameter time.
I'm writing fourteen lines from my hips on down,
Listen to the beautiful rhyme, Lord, Lord,
Listen to the beautiful rhyme.
The teacher said to John Henry,
"Look at this stuff I found."
He was surfing the Web like a crazy man
And John Henry was laying it down
Lord, Lord,
John Henry was laying it down.
John Henry wrote about autumn
And his girlfriend Polly Ann
The teacher was downloading pictures of the moon
But John Henry wrote lines like a man
Lord, Lord,
John Henry kept writing like a man.
Then the teacher started to holler
And tap on the laptop keys
Every line he wrote was lost
Like leaves blown away in a breeze, Lord Lord
Like leaves blown away in a breeze.
The laptop froze and it had to shut down
And then reboot the screen
And the pencil kept going on the yellow page
It came to line fourteen, Lord, Lord!
It came to line fourteen.
The No. 2 pencil was hot that day
The lead was breathing fire
It wrote a poem about love and death
And memory and desire, Lord, Lord!
And memory and desire.
All you writers who sit at computers
If you're struggling here's what you do
Put a piece of paper on the table top
And pick up a No. 2, Lord, Lord,
And pick up a No. 2.