To the new boyfriend by rudy francisco

To the random dude who started dating my ex girlfriend two days after we broke up (yes, I read that on facebook). When I saw that you were in a relationship with the girl that I thought I would someday spend the rest of my life with, I walked outside. I said to myself, “There’s no way Ashton Kutcher is gonna catch me off guard.” I waited 45 minutes and then I realized, there hasn’t been a new episode of “punked” in almost three years, so I guess I’m the only practical joke in this entire situation.
One: The first time I saw you and her in a picture, I wanted to take my entire arm, shove it inside of the computer and snatch the happiness right off of your face. 

Two, if I ever see you in the street, I’m probably going to punch you in the throat. I apologize in advance.

Three, I’m sorry for hating you so much. And I know that it makes no sense to have this much anger toward a man that I have never met face to face, but my definition of love is being robbed in an alley 8 times in a row and hoping there’s something about today that makes all of this different. There is nothing logical about cutting off the most important parts of yourself then putting them inside hands that shake, that tremble, that crack like a hatian sidewalk.

Four, there is nothing rational about love. Love stutters when it gets nervous, love trips over its own shoelaces. Love is clumsy, and my heart doesn’t wear a helmet.

Four, cupid is fucking irresponsible, and I’m tired of him using me for target practice. 

Five, I was told that time would heal all wounds. But what exactly do you do on days when it feels like the hands on your clock have arthritis?

Six, she always wore her heart on her sleeve. So tell me, why do you look so familiar?

Seven, I think I’ve seen you somewhere in her smile.

Eight, I think I’ve heard you in her laughter, I bet if we dusted her heart for fingerprints, we would only find yours.

Nine, you see I have this envelope, I carry it with me all the time, it’s full of all the butterflies I felt the first time she relaxed the velcro on her lips and smiled in my direction. Most of them are still alive. I can still feel their wings through the paper. I suppose these belong to you, too.”

Rudy Francisco – Love Poem Medley

How do I create annotations? I want you to bite my lip until I can no longer speak
And then suck my ex girlfriend’s name out of my mouth just to make sure she never comes up in our conversations
I’m going to be honest, I’m not really a love poet
In fact, every time I try to write about love my hands cramp… just to show me how painful love can be
And sometimes my pencils break, just to prove to me that every now and then love takes a little more work than you planned
See I heard that love is blind so, I write all my poems in brail
And my poems are never actually finished because true love is endless
I always believed that real love is kind of like a super model before she’s air brushed;
It’s pure and imperfect, just the way that God intended
See I’m going to be honest, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love I swear that my first poem…
It would be about you

About how I loved you the same way that I learned how to ride a bike: Scared
But reckless with no training wheels or elbow pads so my scars can tell the story of how I fell for you
You see, I’m not really a love poet
But if I was I’d write about how I see your face in every cloud and your reflection in every window
You see I’ve written like a million poems hoping that somehow maybe someway you’ll jump out of the page and be closer to me
Because if you were here, right now
I would massage your back until your skin sings songs that your lips don’t even know the words to

Until your heartbeat sounds like my last name and you smile like the pacific ocean
I want to drink the sunlight in your skin
If I was a love poet
I’d write about how you have the audacity to be beautiful
Even on days when everything around you is ugly
You see I’d write about your eyelashes and how they are like violin strings that play symphonies every time you blink

If I was a love poet
I’d write about how I melt in front of you like an ice sculpture
Every time I hear the vibration in your voice so whenever I see your name on the caller ID my heart
It plays hop scotch inside of my chest
Yo it climbs on to my ribs like monkey bars and I feel like a child all over again
I know this sounds strange but every now and then I pray that God somehow turns you back in to one of my ribs...
Just so that I would never have to spend an entire day without you

I swear, I’m not a love poet
But if I was to wake up tomorrow morning and decide that I really wanted to write about love
My first poem it would be about you
And after all of that she was like, so how do you feel about me?
And I said, put it like this:
I want to be your ex boyfriend’s stunt man. I want to do everything that he never had the courage to do like… trust you

I swear that when our lips touch I can taste the next sixty years of my life
And some days I want to swallow stacks of your pictures just so you can be a part of me for a little bit longer
If I could I would sample your smile and then I would let my heart beat
Do the bass line, we would create the greatest love song of all time
Whenever, we stand next to each other, love I was the only one made for you and you can be at last my Etta James
I’ll be oh child when you’re in pain or you could be candy coated drops of rain
Even though it never rains in Southern California
And together, we could be music

And when my friends ask if you’re my girlfriend
I’ll say no
She is my musician
And me… I’m her favorite song

Scars by Rudy Francisco

1. If I could I would nail these hands to the edges of stars. I would sacrifice this body to the sky hoping to resurrect as someone spiteful enough to not give a fuck about you.
2. Staple me to a cross. Pierce my side with a broken promise and I will bleed all the crippled reasons why you deserve one more chance.
3.Your bed smells like the last thing I was really good at.
4.You wanna know how I got these scars? I ripped every last piece of you out of my smile.
5. I whispered you stardust.
6. I spoke you into sunflowers.
7.I dipped my hands in forever. Touched you infinity. Treated you as if you were the last molecule of oxygen inside of a gas chamber. I was good to you.
8. You wanna know how I got these scars? I swallowed my pride and it clawed it’s way outside of my mouth.
9. I realized I was never really your boyfriend. I was just your fuckin hype man.
10. I hope your next boyfriend gets smallpox.
10. Yes I said smallpox!
10. I hate you!
10. I miss you!
10. I love you!
10. It’s hard for me to count when I get emotional.
10. I heard that 90% of human interaction is nonverbal so….
10. If I could I would tie your arms to a daydream and then auction you off to my fondest memories.
See I wrote this poem in my own spinal fluid, I put it on the backbone of a white flag so before you read it you’ll already know that I’ve given up. I’ll just keep you here. Shackled to the most important chapter of my life story pressed into the basement of my eyelids like liquid salvation so I remember you beautiful with amazing underneath your wings and an orchid smile you gorgeous earthquake. You cracked hourglass with sand spilling from behind your ribs, you wasted my time.
How dare you linger on my lips and then kiss me like a stuttering apology with excuses stapled to the roof of your mouth. I still remember you like a dream  tattooed to the inner walls of a long term memory but some days I wonder if you existed at all.
And of course, you wanna know how I got these scars.
Well fine I’ll tell you…
I got these scars the day I fell in love with you.
I landed face first.

Lyrics of "Poetic Bloodline" by Gemineye

One night, God came to me in a dream
With a scheme that seemed to be out of this world
He approached me and opened his robe
And showed me a hypodermic needle in the shape of a pen
And my first reaction was to step back fast
But then God grabbed me and said
“Slow down my child,
I’ve got a job for you to do”
And with a burst of light God grabbed my arm
And said “I mean you no harm”
And he pushed the pen in
And it filled my arteries and God charted me
To write some new shit, some true shit, something just for you shit
And when I was done with part one
God said “write some part two shit”
He injected me with Billy’s Blues and a muse of Langston Hughes
And God said “you’ve acquired some of the tools in the school you’ve been attending
But now it’s time to stop pretending”
And he started sending into my bloodstream
The poetic feats of John Keats
And the published greats of W.B. Yeats
And just when I thought God was through
He started slipping me hits of Maya Angelou
And God asked “do you know what I’ve handed you?”
And my response was “No” and God said “let me show”
And he continued to fill my veins the same way he had been
Giving me a fix of Emily Dickenson and my bloodstream seemed to scream
As God gave me the liquidated literary genius of W.E.B.
And I got lost between doses of Robert Frost
And my eyes got blurry in a flurry
And I was no longer seeing ‘em but I could feel Emerson, Tennyson, and Stevenson
And God said “you won’t get far without Paul Orange Dunbar
And you can’t start spittin ‘til I’ve given you Whitman”
And God kept filling me and it felt like he was killing me
And I closed my arm tight and God snapped it back open
And screamed “you’re not yet ready to write”
He said “tonight has just begun
Everything’s alright my son
You see I need you
I use poetry to teach people
The world I created has been overrun by ignorant thinking
And I need poets to take the world back and break the curse
Now unbend your arm so I can give you William Wordsworth”
And again the pen was shoved in my veins and God grabbed the reigns
And as if I was a mule
He said “I use you as my tool and plow the field with you
Fulfilling empty minds’ needs while planting knowledge seeds
No longer will there be a flourishing time for malnourishing minds
I want you to make intelligence a law cuz ignorance is a crime
Now I need you to go and reap what you sow
While captivating minds like Edgar Allen Poe
I gave you the wings so now fly like the raven
This world needs saving
Feel free to fight off your fears
Cuz they’ll disappear within this injection
Of my tears which contains the remains of great things gone
And new things to come beyond the next dawn
You’re the next in a bloodline of greats
You are a poet
You command the attention of large groups
You ready the troops for revolution
You write words that can commend or condemn
Turn boys into men
Make other poets push pens
And you must be about something more than slam scores based on ten
Because you are a poet
Think about all the great things poets have accomplished
And when the writing gets rough
Hold on to your pen
And don’t drop this
Always take time in your mind to reflect back on the fact
That you’re the next to step forth
From a poetic bloodline”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ydutKWEoA

Lyrics of "What Are You Fighting For?" by Gemineye

I would stand to miss the fists on the battlefield
Among an army of red and an army of blue
And I stand tall and true
As I ask you
What are you fighting for?

This four foot by four foot concrete block
You’re arguing for and bartering for
Is merely a prison without bars
That still manages to arrest you by
Confining your mind
And you allow this corner to define you
And now you’re redefining yourself by calling yourself a street corner
Entrepreneur
And I ask you
What are you fighting for?

You see now you’re standing on corners
I used to call my own corners
I once considered a safe zone
And now, I’m too afraid to let my mother walk to the store alone
Cuz these streets
They’re covered with cowardly fake gangsters
And I’m angered at the nonsense
That rag on your head is somehow
Keeping knowledge from seeping into your brain
Don’t you see that you’re dying for nothing
Rather than living for something
You’re self-destructing and just fucking your own self over
And I ask you
What are you fighting for?

You’re waging wars over something that never was and never will be yours
Cuz owning the streets is just a fictitious concept
That gets misused by hip-hop dudes
Trying to pass themselves off as reincarnated gangsters
So, contrary to popular belief
no matter how deep your gang is or how much money
you’ll think you’ll make from crack rocks
The only concrete rocks you’ll ever own
are the ones that come with steel bars
Or the ones we call tombstones
So I guess the only decision left for you to choose is whether
The fabric in your casket should be red or blue
And I ask you
What are you dying for?

I TOO I APOLOGISE! THE REBUTAL.

I apologize too
Though White is my hue
I had nothing to do with your plight
Just because I'm white
I apologize

I apologize for me
All my life you've been free
But you see I've been guilty of a crime I didn't commit.
I've never put anybody in chains..I haven't done shit.
I apologize

I apologize
You see I have fought too
I overcame prejudices I was taught about you
My mind is free and I see you and me on an equal foot.
Yet there is still the need to
Apologize

I apologize
For being the white devil and "the man"
when I was growing up harmony was my plan
But I've been branded too by some for things I did not do
I apologize

I apologize
For the way things were
Even though my heart has been pure
I look to the future and hope that one day
Neither side will feel like they have to pay
For a debt incurred so long ago
Once again though....
I apologize

I apologize still
Hand in hand we have to climb the hill
Let's put behind the past and move on
A new world where our children are strong
Where we can live together as brothers, fathers, sister and mothers
Where nobody will feel the need to....
Apologize

Lyrics of "I Apologize" by Oscar Brown Jr.

I apologize for being black
All I am plus all I lack
Please sir, please m’am
Give me some slack
‘Cause I apologize

I apologize for being poor
For being sick and tired and sore
Since I ain’t slick
Don’t know the score
I do apologize

I apologize because I bear
Resemblance most black people share
Thick lips, flat nose, and nappy hair
Yes I apologize

I apologize for how I look
For all of the lows and blows I took
On those Lord knows I’d close the book
As I apologize

I apologize for all I gave
For letting you make me yo’ slave
And going to my early grave
Yes I apologize

I apologize for being caught
For being sold, for being bought
For being told I count for naught
Yeah I apologize

I apologize for all I’ve done
For all my toil out in the sun
Don’t want to spoil your righteous fun
So I apologize

I apologize and curse my kind
For being fooled, for being blind
For being ruled, and in your bind
Yes I apologize

I apologize and curse my feet
For being slow, for being late
Because I know it’s me you hate
Why not apologize

I apologize and tip my hat
‘Cause you so rich and free and fat
Son of a bitch, that’s where it’s at
And I apologize