If I Could Make It Work

"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 little I get of the love that 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 bucks

It's a four cent nickel for my dime store thief

But it sure reads good

And If I could make it work in life

(Make it work in life)

Like it works on paper

(Works on paper)

If the love that I describe

(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 on a pair of wings

And I would

(I would)

I would fly

(I would fly)

If I could only make it work in life

And at the end of every night I add up the tips

That account for what might not come down to a thing

That amounts to a life and the sum of it all

I'm afraid is less than what I know

I need to slip beneath the surface of my forgeries

Where I buried my hopes with sometimes my dreams

Still stir me and steal me away

And I can still hear Dineh Bikeyah call

Just like when we were kids

And I could tell you all about it in a song

But Lord I wish that

I could make it work in life

(Make it work in life)

Like it works on paper

(Works on paper)

If the love that I describe

(Love that I describe)

Could be anything but words

Then I would wipe my eyes

(Wipe my eyes)

I'd dry this ink

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

(I would fly)

And I would fly!

If I could only make it work in life

If I could only make it work in life"