I always like a little trouble in my life
I like it ‘cause its like the sweetness in the bitter lemonade.
It makes that warm feeling in your chest at night before you go to sleep when you are lying there in bed with only those crazy ideas of how sweet that trouble could be.
There ain’t nothing that’s close to being as nice as that. Not paying your bills on time,
Or getting a good job when you really need one, or finding a guy who says he’ll fix your car
And won’t rip you off even if you are a girl.
That trouble is like a nice smooth piece of black obsidian that you have kept in your pocket
with you since the day you found it.
It don’t mean nothin’ to anyone but you ‘cause no one else sees you got it,
Or how much you love it or how good it makes you feel.
But that trouble is what keeps you flipping off the rest of the world
and knowing almost one-hundred percent of this world ain’t worth saving
a god damned pop-top ring for ‘cept that little bit of trouble.
Which will always play the rhythm for your walk, or line the dice up right,
Or have you out driving on a night the full moon comes up,
so when you bank the turn through the cornfield it’s suddenly there, all orange
Just ahead, a hundred-thousand miles.
It’s the trouble in life that make it fun and the trouble in you
that I expect to pour out into my cereal bowl.
The prize I’m after so I can throw out all the rest and keep just that night
sitting in the back seat of the convertible looking at that moon over the lake
In the still warm summer heat.
‘cause there was no way in hell we should have been there together
And yet there was never anything as right or true and we both knew that
We’d be in trouble for the rest of our lives.
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 2, 2017.
