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       CHORUS:   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       CHORUS   If I could only make it work in life.