The Downlow

My photo
austin, texas, United States
aspiring writer, English and journalism student, hails from Texas. likes include writing, coffee, books, whisky and people.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

baby went to amsterdam

My nightstand is shaped like an octagon, 
it takes up almost a whole corner of my room.
It used to be on my mother's half of my parent's bedroom,
but now it's not because my mother isn't there either.
It once held camera boxes full of photos she packed away,
catalogued like priceless memories even though most of them were simple,
me playing soccer or her and my dad looking nice, 
the nights she smelled like perfume.
It has seen my parent's first apartment,
and Columbus, Pittsburgh, Midland, Norman, Plano.
Now it sees me, sprawled across a quilted mattress with no bedframe,
trying to turn a piece of furniture into poetry. 
It holds the things I could not find a place for, 
nothing priceless, the things I forget.
Upon it sit a yellow lamp, an overpriced candle in a baby blue teacup, a picture of my best friend,
a girl my mother never met.
The nightstand has seen her come and go, has seen the things she could not throw away,
has smelled her perfume.
Now the octagon is empty in a new city,
and maybe someday soon I will fill it with things I cannot throw away,
and I will learn to catalogue too.

-Loch.

Monday, September 26, 2011

real pain for my sham friends


Champagne dripping from the ceiling
and from her dress and she’s dancing to New Boyz
and chugging the biggest mimosa that you’ve ever seen.
There is not much that could stop her,
a phone call from a particular boy with three easy words
is the only thing that could convince to come home.
Instead, she gets no call,
she gets more beer,
and when she tip toes from the house in the morning,
dried champagne glitters in the sun by the ceiling fan.





Not much editing.
-Loch

Saturday, September 24, 2011

cowboy kid

There is something separate and quiet about 
the moments when my thoughts take hold of you,
focus on the crease of your lips when you smile
and the way your eyebrows raise,
on the times our eyes meet.
A half second later the vacuum returns,
sucks me back to ground and dirt
and I’m whirling again,
the earth throbbing beneath me
like it has for months, it feels,
I’ve felt so much until you.
You are separate and quiet,
a drug that makes me finally alone,
finally quiet,
finally separate,
finally able to fall asleep.

lightly edited.
Love,
Loch.

Friday, September 23, 2011

i'm lost in the world

satisfaction, however temporary, is the sweetest thing.
I will keep planning and plotting and devising until the day I die, and I promise you,
things will go my way,
and things are going to be okay.

Love,
Loch.

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Monday, September 19, 2011

there's a light on in chicago

I'm not going to lie- I have a lot of friends.
Not bragging or anything, I just really love people and I know a lot of them. I don't have a lot of close friends, but people tend to ask me when they're looking for parties or they need to get in touch with someone because I have the most connections, and I'm always the one who brings three or four too many people along with her. I've always been loud and obnoxious, particularly in situations where I should not be talking, like class- I had a love/hate relationship with almost every single one of my teachers in high school for commentating on what we were talking about that day with usually relevant but often unnecessary thoughts. I got in trouble in like, literally every class and there was always a point in the year when my teachers would just give up trying to keep me quiet after I would respond to their last ditch effort of moving me across the room from my friends by A)yelling across the room instead and B)making friends with my new neighbors. I am an extroverted person, and while I require alone time and I often get annoyed or bored if I'm around the same people for too long, I am inherently social.
I think though, that I gravitate toward people who aren't. I guess I never paid attention until recently, but the people who I don't get bored of, who I really let in and who I'm fascinated by, are the quiet ones- the ones who don't wear their heart on their sleeve, which is something I have an unfortunate habit of doing. It's a challenge getting to know them, and I guess once I do something tells me not to let it go. While I've had close friends who are just as outgoing and crazy as I am, the people who I really, really trust and who I'm genuinely loyal to are always the ones who I have to break out of their shell a little bit.
I think maybe I might be a little bit jealous- they have mystery, and have probably spent a lot more time thinking than I have. Mostly, though, I think it's because I know that I can really truly trust them with the dark things that I keep to myself, and that's hard to find.

Love,
Loch.

i am no angel

This weekend I saw kanye west and stevie wonder, showered myself in glowstick juice, and resisted the urge to buy a $57 pair of shoes. I have learned, through it all, that there are never, ever going to be enough pictures of me drunk in a sombrero- never. 
There really isn't a point to this post. 

Oh.
I started writing something new again. And I wrote a poem.
I can feel it in my bones that people will read this one day.

Love,
Loch.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

everything has happened

"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.
 I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days."

-Loch

I'm getting old














Who is the man I see where I'm supposed to be? I lost my heart, I buried it too deep under the iron sea. Lines even more unclear, not sure I'm even here. The more I look, the more I think that I'm starting to disappear. I don't know where I am, and I don't really care. I look myself in the eye, there's no one there. I fall upon the earth, I call upon the air, but all I get is the same old vacant stare.  Oh, crystal ball, crystal ball, save us all, tell me life is beautiful. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, I'm fading out. Everything I know is wrong, so put me where I belong.

Love,
Loch.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

sun is what you're chasing


The hours slip to morning, I see the sun coming up.
I'm turning off the TV,
I'm watching faster than you gave up on me,


I will stand outside, wait for you to come find me,
I will keep on my light by my bed till you get home,
and I won't sleep tonight until you get home.




Love, 
Loch.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

here i stand

Why am I online right now? It is four in the morning on a Friday. Of all the things I should be doing in Austin, it should not be facebook creeping.
No but seriously. This has been a good Friday.
I think I'm chill with having a long to do list... for now

Love,
Loch.

p.s. I am actually writing and working, I promise. I know I haven't talked very much about it lately. Lo Siento. Updates soon! Probably on fictionpress too... even though no one seems to keep up with that well enough to comment or provide any actual feedback.
Hah no but forreal. Updates soon. Love you!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

fix you

foreshadowing is everywhere.

-Loch

Monday, September 5, 2011

I believe.

There is something in my bones that tells me when something is or isn't right, and I only get the feeling every so often but when I do it always follows through. I look at someone or something and I know that things are or aren't going to end in my favor, and to be honest it's usually hell getting there one way or the other, but I'm almost always right on the mark.
This semester, however little of it has happened so far, has been strange. I've barely gone in to work, my apartment complex has been up in arms because of a recent tragedy, and friends are grieving and one of them is gone. Last Saturday I went to a birthday party and this Saturday I went to a funeral. Labor day and Richard's birthday are over now and the world will really start back up tomorrow.
I'm not really sure what point I'm trying to make to be honest. I think a lot of times I start off stories like that and end with some kind of moral, but I really don't have one this time. I guess I just need to type because, don't get me wrong, I've dealt with a lot of change over the years, but this time everything happened so fast and it's a little harder to think on my feet, you know?
Through all of this though, there are a few lights at the end of the tunnel, if you will. I can assure you, I'm sprinting towards them. This week has been exhausting and entirely too void of activity.
Now, just for fun, here is a stupid picture I took God knows when with photo booth. Note the classy ass beer can.
If anything has become distinctly apparent to me in the past three weeks, it is this: when I'm old and drinking a glass of whisky with my cereal when I wake up at three in the afternoon, and when I do book signings and other fancy things, I will most definitely have written something about my time in this particular apartment.

Love you,
Loch.

p.s. for the record, I am not dumb. This is for someone specific. You know who you are, and if you don't then you should.