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The Enemy is Cake by Sissy Taylor

Sitting there, staring back at me....this hunger that isn’t real is filling me
And I know that if I give in, I will only regret it later
To the outside world, all this contemplation and fear
Seems crude and ignorant and in fact obscene
But this struggle is something that I go through everyday
To find this person inside of me
That doesn’t need it anymore
That doesn’t rely on it to tell me that I’m loved
Because love isn’t made of flour and butter and eggs
Love isn’t gone in the 2.5. seconds it takes to cram it in my mouth
Love is this thing that I have to find inside myself
The enemy is cake

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URGES By Poetri

I have the urge to jump over the counter at McDonalds and
make my own Chicken McNuggets.
Cause I’m tired of telling them that I want them fresh and
I’ll wait the five minutes and
they still give me some hot, nasty, microwave, re-cooked ones!

I have the right mind to slap the lady that tells me,
“They are fresh.” No, they’re aren’t!
Don’t you ever have the urge to just punch people?
Sometimes for no reason, but especially when they do or say something stupid.
Too bad, I think sometimes, that my nice body doesn’t react to my mind’s first reactions.

Cause whenever I walk into a library,
I have the urge to start yelling.
Then I wanna punch the first person that tells me, “Shhhh, this is a library.
Like I don’t know!
I have this cruel urge to slap anyone that says libary. It’s a library!

I have this weird urge to walk into Supercuts and demand a haircut,
even though I know they don’t cut black folk hair.

My urges are mean. They’re like my evil twin.
Like I have the urge to go grab that girl’s booty right there.
Everyone who knows me, knows I would never do that, though.
I mean, of course, unless she asked me.

I have the drive to go rob a bank on broke days
or go steal some money out of a cash register on some days.
Thank God I would never actually do that.
Yet, am I criminal for thinking criminal thoughts?
A hoe for thinking hoe thoughts?

I have the urge to go stand on the 405 freeway and
hold my hand up and see how many cars I can get to stop.
I have the urge to get hit by one of those cars
to see who would come to my funeral.
Just cause I have the desire to find out who really loves me…do you?
Am I the only one? Do other people think about doing things that they would never do?
Am I the only one that says to myself…What if?
What if I did this? What if I did that?
What if I stood in the middle of the Beverly Center buck naked?

Okay, maybe you don’t think that and
maybe that was just a little too much information,
but you know what am I saying.
What if we all acted out our urges?
I’d be dead or in jail, right now, or in insane asylum with Unsane.
Trying to refrain from thinking that I’m on the Midnight train to Georgia,
with Glady’s Knight and one Pip, with a busted lip, and a messed up hip,
still talking ‘bout that trip on the Midnight, man, we done flipped
if we acted out our impulses.

I have the urge to keep rhyming like that.
I have the urge to become a cop so that I can arrest other cops.
I have the itch to tell the IRS that they can keep calling and sending mail, but
I’m not gonna pay them the money I owe until I get the money.
I have the longing to tell telemarketers to kiss my ass!
I have the urge to splurge, no work, just play all day,
walk around cussing all day, having sex all day,
but I can’t do that. I won’t do that.
I’m a full fledge Christian. At least I try to be.
That doesn’t mean I don’t have urges.
That doesn’t mean I don’t slip and fall sometimes…okay a lot of times.
I have the urge to slap people that criticize us when we do fall.
When we fall victims to our urges, our desires, our sins.

Not all my urges are bad and cruel and senseless.
I have some nice urges, some sad urges,
things I need to do urges, things I want to believe urges.
Like I have the urge to believe that things really happen like they do in the movies.
Soon as I step out of the movie theater, reality erases that urge.
I have the urge to ask you out.
Shyness always blocks that one.
The urge to cry in public,
my manhood bullies that away.
The urge to sing…
Yolanda Adams or Kurt Carr and the Kurt Carr singers.
I usually act on this urge and
don’t let me put Michael Jackson in the walkman.

Urges are a funny thing. Can you judge a man by his urges?
If so, then I am a pretty weird guy, leading a double life.
But, I don’t think so, urges are what they are.
Quick thoughts thrown at our brain from whichever angle.
When we decide to act on these urges good or bad, then we become them.
Most of us rationalize and think.
And thank GOD that most of us don’t act on all of all urges.

straw to gold
Poetri
http://www.blackwebportal.com/forums/viewmessages.cfm?Forum=23&Topic=1426

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Love by Beau Sia

first performed at Marymount Manhattan College, New York City, fall 1996

I think love is the most beautiful thing
in the world,
and I don't give a fuck,
because I have no original ideas.
I'm a pathetic man
whose goal is to read poetry
in order
to get women
to fall in love with him,
and you'd think I was reprimanding myself
and revealing my horrible dark side
by saying that,
but I was really saying
"women who hear this, fall in love with me, or else,"

because that's what it comes down to --
an ultimatum,
life or death,
and sure, maybe I'm being extreme,
but you walk around and tell me
that things aren't extreme,
jesus,
I've seen a man jack off to a gap window display,
so don't tell me that love isn't important.

and maybe you didn't get that series of lines,
that's OK,
most of them are subtext
designed to impress people
who know too much about art,
all you need to listen to is
the 12 percent
which contain words like "fuck,"
and "ass,"
and "ride my dongstick, you naughty schoolgirl."

because in a poem about love
we all need to know the relevant things,
because we're all looking for the complete definition of love,
if only we could open our encyclopedia brittanicas
and look up love and know,
but love isn't that easy.

they say cupid loved my so called life
and when the show was cancelled
cupid cried and cried and cried and
decided that he was going to fuck up
all of humanity,
and this is why china has a trouble with its birthrate
and arkansas rhymes with date rape
and iraq is iraq,
and the fat lipo-sucked out of california
could be
its own island.
but this isn't a poem about geography,

this is a poem about love,
the bane of my existence,
the reason why I hate valentine's day
and halloween,
which is about ghosts
and I think you know where I'm going here.

I'm going to the land of girlfriends of halloweens past,
and maybe I've only got three ghosts in this land,
but this doesn't mean that they don't bring their friends,
who are the ghosts of girls who have rejected me,
because girls rarely travel alone in this land
. lydia is from this land.
I used to kiss her
while listening to
the cure's "just like heaven,"
now I don't see her anymore,
so that song makes me sad,

why must we associate music with
our love lives?
I'm not trying to be profound here,
I'm just saying that music really takes me
back, way back,
and I can't explain the memory process involved in that,
because I am not a psychology major,
and maybe
my problem with picking up women
has to do with me always asking,
"what's your major?"
but that only makes me as cheesy
as 90 percent of guys
looking for women,
and 86 percent of them have women,
so what's the deal here?
maybe I shouldn't think of women in terms
of picking them up,
and maybe I should open up my sensitive side,

but really,
the sensitive side sucks.
I've been there.
you can only imagine the kinds of sweaters
they make you wear.
it's not fair,
love is not fair,
and war is not fair,
and I don't care what anyone has to say about
any of that,
I feel unloved,

I'm sorry I need people
to tell me I'm cool,
I'm just that way.
aren't you?
am I the only one?
I know that I can't be that
misunderstood.

but you don't want to
understand me!
you just want to hear the part
where I talk about my small dick again,
because the asian man will always be plagued
by this rumor
until he is brave enough to fling it out
and say,
"HA! WE ARE GIGANTIC!"

this is not the direction
I wanted to take
this poem.
honestly, I just want to be in the arms
of my true love, in a house, in a room,
in a wonderful, perfect world with our
two children,
a boy and a girl,
helga and lamar,
but maybe I shouldn't have said this,
woody allen taught us
that marriage is a death trap.

I'm almost as old as his girlfriend.
she could be the long lost sister
I've been looking for,
maybe my mother gave her away
when we lived in china,

wait, I never lived in china.
I think I've begun lying in this poem.
I was hoping to talk about love
for 3.4 minutes
and then
come to a conclusion,
somehow defining love
within the poem,

but
I don't have any answers
and I'm looking for help from anyone,
because love has got me fucked up
and dying,
because I feel retarded without anyone to hold me,
and maybe that's sentimental,
but what's wrong with sentimental?
I just need love --

to self: fuck you, I'm OK!

you see, I can't even decide what I need
much less understand what I'm saying.

you see, all I'm saying
is
someone love me.

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Finding Me by Jenny O’Reily

Walking down 42nd and Broadway, I feel alive
Until I look at a man in a passing car and realize that at this moment, I am no different in my life
See I thought I found myself, what was amazing and beautiful in me
Until I realize that I’m just like the next person in life that finds them self as an amazing individual
See, I can get up and be different, stand out, pay attention, and be ravishing to all who grace upon me
But until I come to terms with this person inside, I can’t find who I really am
An ex-lover told me that I was beautiful; that nothing compared to me
And I was the one who ended the relationship
You see, he was the one person in the world that came so close to the truth, the person inside,
That I had to let him go
Because the beauty he saw, that was right in front of him
Is something that I still can’t see