If I could make it work in life

I sit on a piano stool and I make up songs for these men who

come in with dust on their faces and mud on their boots

From these places that I'll never go.

I sleep in a rented bed with a woman who gives me

what lttle I get of the love we'd like to imagine is left

Of the love that we never did know

I slip out and scribble a note that reads like a million books

It's a four cent nickel for my dime store theme, but it sure reads good

If I could make it work in life

Like it works on paper

If the love that I describe

Could be anything but words

Then I would wipe my eyes

I'd dry this ink

I'd trade my pen in for a pair of wings

And I would fly

If only I could make it work in life

And at the end of every night I add up the tips and I count for what's mine

I come down to a thing that amounts to a lie

And the sum of it all I'm afraid

Is less then what I know I need

to slip beneath the surface of my forgeries

Where I buried my hopes where sometimes my dreams

Still stun me and steal me away.

I can still hear Dine Bikeyah call just like we were kids

I could tell you all about it in a song

But Lord I wish

If I could make it work in life

Like it works on paper

If the love that I describe

Could be anything but words

Then I would wipe my eyes

I'd dry this ink

I'd trade my pen in for a pair of wings

And I would fly

If only I could make it work in life, make it work in life