Poema da Celebração!

É festa!
As borboletas saem
vestidas de todas as cores
para tecer o vestido da Amada.
As rosas desabrocham
especialmente para suas grinaldas.
Mas ela não faz questão;
não quer linhos nem coroas.
Bastam-lhe
a divindade do Presente
e a realeza do Amor.
Mas a Natureza faz questão de cores:
– Que tragam o rei!
Vestindo heras,
calçando raízes,
e com seu devido cetro de corais!
Coroemo-lo de margaridas.
É o majestoso casamento da Alegria.

~ Carlos Pittella Leite
Rio de Janeiro, 19/7/2005;
reciclado em 23/6/2010

The Golden Rule of Compassion

Karen Armstrong says religions is action, not belief, even though people claiming to be religious commonly prefer to be "right" rather than compassionante.

Karen suggests the "golden rule of compassion" as bridge for the meeting and global partnership of religions -- and makes this her wish for this millenium.

one prayer

Let be one the rising of our star shining all countries and seas
Let be one our planting dreams as trees
Let be one the breath of what we call animals & animals cry men
Let be one city and forest again
Let be one our action, our thought and our inspiration
Let be one only one nation
Let be one the sectors first and second and third
Let be one whole as wind, flying and bird
Let be one our ethics with non-violence as root
Let be one our path and our foot
Let be one our esthetics of growing our vision of home
Let be one as the sky on your dome
Let be one our logic of sciences through walls as springs
Let be one end of rivers where the ocean begins

(Carlos Pittella)

Meet the World - Ícaro Doria

Icaro Doria is Brazilian and has been working for the magazine Grande Reportagem, in Lisbon, Portugal. He is part of the team (with Luis Silva Dias, João Roque, Andrea Vallenti and João Roque) that produced the flags campaign which has been circulating the Earth in chain letters via e-mail. Ícaro says:

"We started to research relevant, global, and current facts and, thus, came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colours of the flags, using real data taken from UN and Amnesty International.

The campaign has been running in Portugal since January 2005. There are eight flags that portray very current topics like the division of opinions about the war in Iraq in the United States, the violence against women in Africa, the social inequality in Brazil, the drug trafficking in Columbia, Aids and malaria in Angola."

Some people received this email as being written by a Norwegian diplomat called Charung Gollar, that in fact does not exist. But Ícaro and his team do exist and also this dream of ending poverty and hunger in the world by raising the consciousness of people to what their flags came to represent.

Hungry for Music, Rich of Inspiration

Watch Gustavo Dudamel, accompanied by the spectacular Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra, bringing the audience to its feet, by demonstrating the power of El Sistema to transform children’s lives through music.  They play the 2nd movement of Shostakovich's Symphony #10 & Arturo Márquez' Danzón #2.

The Teresa Carreño Youth Orchestra contains the best high school musicians from Venezuela's life-changing music program, 'El Sistema', created by TED Prize winner José Antonio Abreu.

The orchestra's namesake, Teresa Carreño, was a legendary Venezuelan pianist after whom the main concert hall complex in Caracas is also named.  Another Teresa, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, used to say that the most tragic part of poverty is not lacking bread to eat or a house to sleep, but the feeling of being no one to nobody.

End Poverty and Hunger in the World is the first Millennium goal set by United Nations; José Antonio Abreu is making hundreds of thousands rich on Inspiration to give to everyone, but still hungry – not for food, but for Music and Change.

ECOpoetry Haikus

ECOpoetry Fall Workshop,
22nd September 2009
SIT, Brattleboro, VT

orange leaves must fall away
the death of a thousand leaves
to flourish and be reborn

(Catalina Nieto, SIT student from Colombia)

The claw marks are there
long after the old bear leaves
for hibernation

(Bill Devlin, poet from USA)

THE LEAF

A brief view from here

Though it has been beautiful

It's time to let go

(Stephanie Leite, SIT student from USA)

THE COW

Leaves fall to grass
Green turns orange and red.
– Got a banquet of colors.

(Carlos Pittella Leite, ECOpoetry facilitator from Brazil)

by Maggie Estep, The Sex Goddess of the Western Hemisphere

I am THE SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

so don't mess with me

I've got a big bag full of SEX TOYS

and you can't have any

'cause they're all mine

'cause I'm

the SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.



"Hey," you may say to yourself,

"who the hell's she tryin' to kid,

she's no sex goddess,"

But trust me,

I am

if only for the fact that I have

the unabashed gall

to call

myself a SEX GODDESS,

I mean, after all,

it's what so many of us have at some point thought,

we've all had someone

who worshipped our filthy socks

and barked like a dog when we were near

giving us cause

to pause and think: You know, I may not look like much

but deep inside, I am a SEX GODDESS.


Only

we'd never come out and admit it publicly

well, you wouldn't admit it publicly

but I will

because I am

THE SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.



I haven't always been

a SEX GODDESS

I used to be just a mere mortal woman

but I grew tired of sexuality being repressed

then manifest

in late night 900 number ads

where 3 bodacious bimbettes

heave cleavage into the camera's winking lens and sigh:


"Big Girls oooh, Bad Girls oooh, Blonde Girls oooh,

you know what to do, call 1-900-UNMITIGATED BIMBO ooooh."



Yeah

I got fed up with the oooh oooh oooh oooh oooh

I got fed up with it all

so I put on my combat boots

and hit the road with my bag full of SEX TOYS

that were a vital part of my SEX GODDESS image

even though I would never actually use

my SEX TOYS

'cause my being a SEX GODDESS

it isn't a SEXUAL thing

it's a POLITICAL thing

I don't actually have SEX, no

I'm too busy taking care of

important SEX GODDESS BUSINESS,

yeah,

I gotta go on The Charlie Rose Show

and MTV and become a parody

of myself and make

buckets full of money off my own inane brand

of self-righteous POP PSYCHOLOGY

because my pain is different

because I am a SEX GODDESS

and when I talk,

people listen

why ?

Because, you guessed it,

I AM THE SEX GODDESS OF THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE

and you're not.
...Full poem

Poetry Women Bus on Recycled Oil

Gender Equality and Environmental Sustainability are just 2 small labels to the overflowing art of ClimbingPoetree...

Climbing PoeTree is the expression of a growing movement for radical social change. Poets, performers, print-makers, dancers, muralists, and designers, Alixa and Naima have sharpened their art as a tool for popular education, community organizing, and personal transformation. With roots in Haiti and Colombia, Alixa and Naima reside in Brooklyn and track footprints across the country and globe on a mission to overcome destruction with creativity.

Check at aac some videos of ClimbingPoetree performances, including Being Human and Even if She Can't Fly.

The Eagle

seed
Rio de Janeiro, 2006
"Solar Meninos de Luz", Yoga-&-Poetry Class,
Poem by Lucas, Mateus & Alan.
How to offer our voices to Nature? In Ecopoetry, we use Metaphor, that in Poetry means "transport" and, in Ecopoetry, "transplant", which is a little more than transportation: bus transportation plus putting our hands in direct contact with the earth, the earth of language. Therefore, we may transplant our voices to animals, hearing in ourselves what we can freely learn from them...

sprout
I personally did not do anything more than smiling in this poem: Lucas Matheus & Alan were in debt of a homework, and got together to write it in front of me. They inspired themselves in some verses of Popular Rock Brazilian Songs (the first verse for instance), but transplanted all them to the voice of an Eagle, creating, of course, by themselves, the biggest part of the following "tree of words".

tree

There is no wind
Or desert storm
That could forbid yourself of flying
Gaining strength... it flies away
And flying... Flying it lives its way

There is no wave across the sea
Sailing non-stop

The sea tells me
The sun tells me
The sky tells me

With you I shall live always happily
Wherever we are we shall always be together
Under your inspiration, my reason to strive,
Singing and hunting to survive.

The Lion

seed
Rio de Janeiro, 2006: "Solar Meninos de Luz", Yoga-&-Poetry Class
with Lucas Melo, Matheus Silva & Alan Gomes -- the only three children that kept attending to this class, after we getting it to no be obligatory anymore. And the class have never been so good, because these three were really interested in the Union that Poetry is able to manifest. To express this idea of Unity, we decided to practice communitarian poems, inspired in some yoga poses related to the natural elements.

sprout
Thus, came the idea of using Haikais, tradicional forms of Japanese poetry, through which the lyric-self tried to summarize its life according to the main lesson Nature has taught him/her. Hence, Haikais according to Basho's Poetics, are tradicionally related to a Natural scene, never philosophically abstruse, but staring even a clear season of the year... But our Haikais at "Solar Meninos de Luz" were a little bit more free, because of our method of composition: one of us four would practice a yoga pose (ásana), inspired in one of the four natural elements, FIRE in the present case, represented by the "Roaring Lion Pose" (simhagarjanásana). The other three would, each one, compose a instantaneous sentence, inspired in the ásana.

tree

The Lion King has fire hair

Roaring til burns down itself

So wanting to keep his throne.

Savage Class

seed
Rio de Janeiro, 2006:
"Solar Meninos de Luz", Yoga-&-Poetry Class:
Chaos in the room: 5th grade erupting words, wills, passions... Trying to establish a focused-center in this meeting, with a hundred inefficient methods, I saw myself in the middle of a Savage class. What Poetry can do about it?

sprout
I had already asked every 10 or 12 in the class to chose their favorite animals; they answered; more than that, they seemed to have incorporated the savage essences of their predilect beings of the forest: when I realized that, the chaos suddenly could become Poetry. I said something emphatically in the middle of this field, but they did not seem to pay attention. As my animal was the cow, I said that "someone said MOOO in the middle of the class". They laughed, and I continued saying that "and the animals laughed at the milkmaid teacher". They understood the situation and suddenly entered the poem, every action of them, a new verse...

tree
One said “MOOH” in the classroom
And the animals laughed at the milkmaid teacher.

And the Butterfly said
- Say something! ...

And the Cat said
- Meow-meow...

And the Lion roared
- Say it now
or you shall be eaten forever...

And the Owl gave up the metaphor.

And the Lion moved back to his throne, fully satisfied.

And the Cat said once again
- Meow, come back here, meow...

The Tiger, which is a huge cat,
as expected
......was too lazy.

The Pigeon said a Hi!? which was a complaint.

So the whole forest was asking itself:
- What’s going to happen after all?

Suddenly screams the Eagle its YAWP!!!
And we don’t know
if it was an answer.

To Myrrh, part I

Heidelberg, Junho de 2005


"Der Myrr I"
(To Myrrh, part I)