Add Recent Posts to custom page?

[firebrand media]

I've successfully made a custom page with a slew of feeds from external sources.
The data is stashed in "registered" values and displayed in a related template.

One of the last feeds I need is recent forum posts.
I tried just dropping the guts of block_newposts in my custom page template, but I'm missing whatever #include is needed to create the values that code needs.

My searching on this site has not been productive.
Anyone have a lead for me?

I'd rather not write another query and format it all myself when there must be a simple way to bring this in.