Your Voice

I find myself in and out of little bouts of pain. Empathy rather.
Where I hurt so bad for someone knowing there's really nothing I can do.
You can't help someone that won't help themselves, right?

And I am kind of hurt by the fact that we are not stronger and more willing to defend ourselves.
How easy it has become to hide behind a phone screen.
Let an entire world living behind glass in a sparkly case manhandle our lives.
I'm not even accusing, I'm guilty.

Something I feel is far overlooked is how much our people love us.
How much hurt we cause when we let people hurt us.
Every time we let, for lack of a better term, an asshole run or manipulate our life we agonize everyone that wants the best for us.

In my awkward round about way I guess what I'm getting at is that strength has been frowned upon and overlooked.
Standing up for yourself somehow became "bitchy".
Having standards deemed you a prude.
Being generous and big-hearted made you a push over.

And all of these qualities that you cultivated to create a beautiful version of yourself have been turned on you.
Doing your best got you used.
Then half-assing something that would never be appreciated made you "lazy".
And being young must mean you know nothing.
"You're not old enough to know what love or pain is."

But I want you to find your voice.
In this unfair bullshit little world I want you to scream.
Tell them how you feel, get what you want.

Put your middle finger as high as you need.
In the most cliche` way, be who you are.
Wear your hair ratted and wild with colorful words on your lips.
Take their shit with a thick skin.
You have one awesome life to live, there's no sense letting it get walked on.

Xoxo, Gussie

Love and Fire

Two Feet told me love is a bitch and I suppose they knew their shit. 

But isn’t that what life lives on? Love...

After all that’s why you shuffle your frazzled, coffee buzzed self out the door every morning, right?

To conquer whatever it is that sets your soul on fire. 

Out of love. 

Lord I pray you do it all for something you love. 

If it were smudged on canvas it might look like you got ahold of some finger paints and tripped..twice. 

That’s ok, me too. 

But it’s beautiful when it all comes together, love and fire. 

Fight your battles with grit teeth, just don’t let a battle become your war. 

When your heart catches a warm breeze, rest easy and breathe that moment in deep. 

Let love spark your fire instead of pain. 

And when flames are soldering your knuckles and splitting your lips, grin as the blood drips. 

This world belongs to the strong they say.

Irony giggles at these words coming from mine of all lips. 

Get tough, tears when you must. 

White knuckles of a curled fist, keep your guard up. 

Find your heart and give it away. 

At your most frightened moment, jump. 

Breathe and bleed. 

That’s all life really is isn’t it? Love.. and what makes you do it. 

XoXo, Gussie

Blue Ink

Cold toes curled up in wet socks and the smell of horse sweat and leather. 

Yellow moon shining down on something that was supposed to ring true. 

Like the sound of rain drops on my tin roof. 

My braid damp from the mornings frost still smelled like branding fire smoke. 

Your number was written on my wrist in blue ink. 

Funny how when time passed that ink turned like bruises and faded from my arm. 

I had my fingernails colored with chipped red paint and a look of 3 nights bedroll sleep. 

No it really wasn't romantic. 

We were spur rowels and rap music. 

Our porch was drunken laughter and the prettiest sunsets in the world. 

We were young hearts telling old stories with toothy, white grins. 

I sat on old wooden corrals and watched good horses work in bad dirt. 

The best old soul advice I could muster was delivered with a beer in one hand and a bible in the other. 

We were drifting, our minds and moods. 

With hands sunburned and hearts sort of lost. 

It seemed like bad luck and poor decisions were awfully familiar. 

We fell in love with waving grass and mountain air. 

Our fingers were glassed over with calluses and ripped up, gnarly spots, we were so bloody miserable some days. 

We drank too much, cussed too much and laughed it all off. 

I think maybe that’s where I found the most of me. 

Xoxo, Gussie

Like Whisky on an Empty Stomach

I rolled the blister on my thumb, watched the blood swell in the full moon glow through aluminum trailer slats. 

I said ‘You don’t scare me. You loving me scares me.’

He told me I was stubborn. 

I told him that was the only way I knew to be strong. 

I never used to talk about the weather, sweet peas or wild clover.  

Someone once wrote that it all comes and goes in waves. 

Maybe like every other cliche, this too shall pass. 

My hands were supposed to be soft, dainty and feminine but they wear calluses and bruises, scars over tanned skin. 

I was supposed to stay fearless. 

Like I was when I was little, fingers in black mane and a smiling face. 

I used to hike to Escalante’s cross to pray, I don’t even know where to hike to these days.

I need something.

To find something. Someone. 

A safe place. Somewhere. 

Maybe I’ll get a tattoo and dye my hair blue. 

Maybe I already did. 

But what would you have to say?

And would it even matter anyway?

I always wanted to fight. Or learn to cuz it never was in me. 

I’ve gained no war but feel like I’ve lost a part of myself. 

A peaceful quietness given up in exchange for strength. 

The barbed wire I strung around me grew like weeds. 

Only the ones that liked blood could stay it seems. 

They were double tough and callused, I suppose the reason they caught my eye. 

And then I just became some broken person in a bar with tears on the brim of my eyelids. 

Because I’ve always been trying to be everything and I have become nothing. 

Yet somehow I created this, this chaos. 

Someone’s yelling and it’s so loud I hear silence, see lips moving. 

Peeled myself off the floor this morning. 

Tear drops and flakes of mascara on a sunburned wrist. 

Asked myself who the hell I was as I stared at exhausted eyes in a wavy mirror. 

Ratted mess of hair somehow reminded me of all these paths in my life. 

They’re all leading me different ways. 

But I have to pick one. 

I have to decide what I am, who, where.. why.

Why I am.

Hitting me like whisky on my empty stomach.

Why am I? 
XoXo, Gussie

The Dream

I could write something about living the dream. 

About the romance, the passion, the goal. 

I could write that the world is out there waiting for you, could tell you all you have to do is grab it. 

I guess those are fair points. 

There’s truth living in their syllables. 

But I think bloody knuckles and tired eyes make up more of the dream than anything. 

Anxiety, losing sleep. 

Split lips, sunburned wrists, long ass days and rope burns. 

The dream isn’t all the dreamy. 

It’s more like wearing glass shards for diamonds and blood for lipstick. 

Calloused up fingers, handshake like a man. 

Dues to be paid, money made. 

It’s not just a quote about following your heart. 

There’s a lot more blood in it than that.  

Inner war. 

Asking yourself every question that ever creeped through your conscience. 

Your eyes straining for sleep with your mind still screaming. 

‘Is this what you really want?’ 

‘Can you do it?’ 
And yet I have no earthly idea of what’s ahead of me. 
These are just my young, naìve ramblings. 
About things I haven’t earned the right to preach. 

But if I could tell you something and you’d believe it, I’d tell you to feel.

Don’t neglect to rest. 

I’d tell you to love, breathe, run. 

See the world. 

Get what you want. 

That’s life. 

No agendas or plans. 

Teach yourself to live without criteria. 

You’ll become the person you were destined to be. 

Scars like wounds earned in battle, worn with a sort of pride. 

They stayed with you to tell their story. 

Don’t you owe that to yourself? 

To hang with it long enough to tell your story?

Xoxo, Gussie 

Somewhere Inbetween

You ever been so mind f*cked you begin to wonder wether you were meant for something or if it just happened to you? 

Did you fight for this?

Or were you just fighting for bloody knuckles and nothing more?

Trying to get out of my own head.. or in it, not sure which one. 

A look over cold coffee and he asked me “What if I can’t be a gypsy forever?” 

There was something romantic in sleep deprivation and branding season. 

In the horse sweat, sleeping in a bedroll, dancing in green grass half lit from more than the moonlight. 

Something about the gut wrenched anxiety you had hidden under the layers of smile and grit. 

Wanting so bad to have a plan just an idea, anything. 

High on sunshine and sniffling your nose a thousandth time over cuz you just can’t kick the cold. 

I suppose I’m stuck in the wrong state of mind. 

Must’ve taken a wrong turn, fell off the wagon, got lost somewhere and ended up between realms. 

I’ve been changing for a while tho, today I looked back on who I was 2 years ago, wow. 

I’m another person, you wouldn’t even recognize me. 

Thank the Lord. 

So no, I’m not really that broken. 

I’m just telling you the shit. 

You know, the kind that lingers and lurks. 

The real stuff. 

Cause nobody stays the same and you won’t either. 

You’re gonna change, grow up, move on. 

Life’s going to happen to you. 

Let it happen for you.  

XoXo, Gussie 

Just in Ink

I wrote from somewhere I wasn’t even supposed to be.
About something that never should have meant anything to me.
Inky claw marks left on paper as a means to bleed out, for some relief.
That was my only fight.
I tried to scream, I did.
But when I’m mad I cry.
I wanted to stand up for myself, step out of my own skin.
Believe me.
Maybe if I tried harder.
But how?
Do I try harder to make it right?
Or harder to fight?
At this point I don’t know which is winning.
Or just don’t try?
Am I in too deep?
Over think, no wait, over drink.
Liquor for courage to give me looser lips.
I told you this story, but does it make sense?
I wrote it with cold fingers, and I suppose it really is no story.
Words on paper.
No more.
But at least I finally wrote them.
I’ll cling with white knuckles to that little victory.
That’s been really hurting, how I feel I’ve somehow lost that part of me.
I’m still mad and hurt, giddy and joyful, alive.
I haven’t changed all that much.
My hands forgot how to write is all.
Perhaps at a time when my mind is to be growing, it’s grown all too small.
No, it’s not what you think.
For the thousandth time, stop telling me.
Telling me that “It’s ok” and “Don’t worry.”
I know it is.
‘Cause even when it’s not ok I keep breathing.
So don’t mistake me.
Though I tend to scribble words in places all too confusing.
I’m not broken, and neither are you.
It’s ok to be hurting, I’ve found it won’t kill you.
Even if you want it to.
So you’re best just to feel it.
Let it steep and let it stew.
Make it something, painful and brutal, and beautiful, even if only just to you.

XoXo Gussie

Broken Pens and a Legal Pad

I woke up with horse sweat still in my busted knuckles and 3 am hangover breathe.
No sun yet.
I found notes and a tune but lost my words.
Maybe I wrote because I didn't have time for shit to be real.
Perhaps all my cooped up emotions got bled out of a broken purple pen like bruises on a yellow legal pad.
Left there.
You probably noticed the sudden scarcity of ramblings.
They got lost behind forbidden statements.
Forgotten thoughts.
I always promise to tell you someday.
Foolish I suppose.
I told myself I'd stand up; change.
Do something.
Maybe.
Last night I listened to a horse ease in and puff breathes out onto my skin.
I spend everyday with their mane in my fingers and a leg on either side, yet I never even listen to them breathe.
I want to watch a sunset, wake up early, steal a kiss.
Just live.
No more empty promises on replay, a broken record skipping like an old name did off my lips.

And maybe with a little luck I'll be a bit less of a strung out writer, make a little more sense.

XoXo, Gussie