US basketball player Jason Collins has come out as gay, the first active male athlete in a major American professional team sport to do so. He declared his sexuality in an article for Sports Illustrated, announcing: "I'm a 34-year-old NBA centre. I'm black. And I'm gay."

President Barack Obama, NBA star Kobe Bryant and Sportswear Company Nike were among those expressing public support. On Monday, Mr Obama called Collins to tell him he was impressed with his courage and offer his support, the White House said.

Read the full statement here - it is very moving and so bravely honest. Every best wish for the future.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/magazine/news/20130429/jason-collins-gay-nba-player/#ixzz2RvcdfXFi

 

 

Honesty is Inspirational
 

The proud and the beautiful man arises within the dawn

Fairer now than sunshine streaming through the May dew

Holding the sweet blossom of courage and honour in his words

Only small hate from passing night casts disquieting shadow

Soon gone, momentary dying flickers in a new day’s hearth

So step out into the new date; at last as you were made

And for its goodness be at peace inside an inspirational act

For it is done now and its timing and grace are most welcome

Important to mention at this point all the women who have done the same thing and yet never seem to have got the same publicity.

Empires of Miniscule Power

 

Feel the warming earth between forefingers and thumb

Even on old, weathered digits the grit will abrade the skin
Its smell is wholesome and eternal; so full scented with life
The smallest particles of life exist within a micro cosmos of dirt
Its empires of miniscule power rise and fall within a spoonful
My each loving touch wanders through abundant, hale billions
And into such a fecund environment I place my treasured seed
And it shall thrive in its innate fertility amongst this medium
Come autumn it will have grown full ripe and I will be content
Like a loving parent all shall be gathered in close and treasured

A Late Frost

A late frost has come to moderate the shorter nights

It carries out a verdict the impatient are to be burned
Heretics to the summer; the cold judges them guilty
Lush green leaves are now edged in brown borders
The touch of a retrograde yet swift, merciless enemy
But see the ancient faithful spared and prosper now
In humility and virtue they open their budding arms and...
The greening dales and sunlit woods are awashed yellow

 

The Regressive Arachnid

There is a spider on my wall
He visits here every spring
Returns and patiently waits
At least I think it is male
Though I might be wrong
The regressive arachnid
I named him in tribute of
His patience and determination
See him prone below the picture
Of large trees and rolling hills
Perhaps he longs to be there
Now she never comes to him
Unknowing how she loved him so
But best for her to stay away now
For he has grown so old and fat
And she is so hungry after winter

A Window

Look out a window if you doubt the day

For the tide of dawn is now ebbing away
Upon the ground and so high in the air
The joy of morning is now ours to share
Rise and see a whole new day unfold
Within one day see the great story told
That tale it tells much older than rhyme
Destinies await; within the hands of time

A Guide

 

When you say to me the world can’t change

I tend to agree with that premise you hold
And how do I know? You showed me the way
But though I tend to agree with the principle 
Hope is a much stronger emotion than despair
Each time I have needed help you’ve been there

Cerebral Goldfish

So what shall we say of individual intelligence

Where does it mesh within the cerebral hierarchy?
Am I usefully intelligent? Are any of us really so?
For the great waking technologies we now laud
May to others from further reaches of the cosmos
Be nothing but tawdry Heath-Robinson* inventions
Badly constructed with a tape and string knowledge
Flawed theorems executed without due diligence
Or perhaps it really is the master key to unlock all
Quench our need to understand the how and why
To dissipate wonder into the cloud of innovation
To in the end discover life is as simple as numbers
Just sequences of sentience scattered with errors
And science has discovered the way to correct them
I do not need to have the greatest intelligence
To know that is the most chilling scenario of all
 

* In the UK, the term "Heath Robinson" has entered the language as a description of any unnecessarily complex and implausible contraption, similar to "Rube Goldberg" in the U.S. "Heath Robinson" is perhaps more often used in relation to temporary fixes using ingenuity and whatever is to hand, often string and tape, or unlikely cannibalisations. Its popularity is undoubtedly linked to Second World War Britain's shortages and the need to "make do and mend".

Broadband not so Wide

A man from Telecom came today to repair ASDL
Did he manage to do it; I am afraid, did he hell!
The moment a signal from my PC was attached
The router light flickered and connection detached
So here I am with a connection to the net dropping
Forsooth the annoyance; I can’t do any shopping
The signal is on then off throughout most of the day
Only by patience can I post my blog and have my say

We are as we were made

We are as we were made and we must all take a life voyage. From stem to stern on a ship of what seems chance we ride the waves of destiny seeking the quiet harbours of understanding, (that if we are lucky;) become becalmed by benevolent intervention. Here we can grow free of harm in the gentlest backwaters where we might observe the world and live without the storms that inhabit and emigrate out of the isolating deep oceans. Or so I wish to be; though others may apparently desire a more turbulent outcome.

Yeast

It rises from the bowl like a spectre seeking rebirth

It senses the warmth and feasts on natural sugars
Life swells within the structure of flour and water
But tis finite this living thing and it slows to ending
Its sweet resources gone; it waits in gaseous dread
For the heat of the oven to deliver our daily bread

It is in my mind

It is in my mind that duty is the boundary of perception

In the long days before sweet release of sleep remands us
While above a newly risen crescent moon tracks west
A lone fox lusts vicariously at the starry sky for a mate
It is sight and soft sound and aged, weathered objectives
That pivot on a wish to see what dreams we may make real

Labours Reward

 

For labour has its own reward

So they say
And am I to gainsay wisdom?
Though it cracks apart joints and muscles
Atrophied in indoor winter warmth
For how else can I...
Count new days rising in spring
In labour we create and see anew
And it is good

 

 

The Long Breath

 

All the while deliver only that which cannot be named 

Wasted honour served as a cold dish best eaten chokingly
For the hand will move as it will; just as night greets dawn?
As wind moves across a parched plain that once ran green
Not for want am I dispirited by deprecations of the world
It moves and bites me though I cannot see its long intent
For my short blessed measures long rage against a machine
That would work us all into dull ingots of conforming idiocy
But not for naught do we retain all of our individual traits
For deep inside us no matter the cost to our uncertain liberty
We still see the world for what it was before triumph; it was...
A paradise that took hold of a fell wind and lapsed to darkness

Night Wonder

When shall patience bear fruit to become the harvest of slow regret?

Shall it be gathered one morning on the dew around a flower calyx?
Or fall down to earth and break upon the roots of wisdom full ripe
If foresight is a gift then it long abandoned me for much purer pastures
Under a night April sky lit by a crescent moon is where sweetness lingers
And I wander now in the nightfall of my memory harvesting the starlight
For if there is wonder still in the world it shuns both daylight and company

At the Ritz

A frail and elderly lady passed away today while recuperating in the Ritz hotel

We should not ‘speak ill of the dead’ my mother would often tell us as children
The tenet of wisdom lingers and so what shall we talk of now that fact remains
We should not ‘speak ill of the dead’ and so for me then; I have nothing else to say

Summer Plan

Summer gently took hold of my hand today and walked me through her plan

To be as yielding as three graces dancing in voile at the edge of a swift sunrise
To give console to all that desire peace and set a bountiful harvest in motion
The air is moving; changing; as earth spins closer in its arcing orbit to the sun
She calls now to her sleeping legions and out of crevice, hole and mud they awake
To take to the air on winter rested wings and ride currents; swirling in sunbeams
Sit languorously in still, shallow cold water, lit by piercing, bejewelled light shafts
She rouses trees from slumber and the great, solid hearts of the oak and beech now...
Pump the blood of the earth high up into the sky to kindle green flames of growth.
I cannot deny her plan, it is as old as time; and my heart ready to be fully ripe with joy
She takes now me into her world and I hold it tight; for who but a fool would not walk...
With such a queen as Summer and see that all around us there is no more sign of winter

Victory

 

The second coldest March for over a hundred years

Withdraws icy fingers from my spring eager heart
Retreats like a beaten spectre over snow clad hills
Softly it goes in a gentle diminution of its icy hold
Touching the trees and the fields in one last grasp
It is vanquished; now warmth rushes in the breach

IKEA

A cardboard box, a screwdriver and a drill

IKEA delivered; now all I need is the will
Pictorial references my instructions in-kind
Self assembly furniture from a tortured mind
At a point in the process my back went crack
It would be easier for me to send it all back
Defeated and broken; the Scandinavians won
But I’ll persevere in pain until the job is done

It may well be much colder than typical but the inevitable press of springs’ impetus delivers these new born lambs to the hillside farm above the garden. There was also a group of deer and I think a red kite evident the other day.

Locus

The outer locus of identity forms where the sky meets the sea

Far away from land
Faint light wraps the curve of the world in a lost focal point
Yet I will journey there
To the red sunsets on a ship with tall sails and scything keel
Will answers attend me?
At the end of the known sighted world where lost islands wait
Outside of sight and time

A new world comes into view in England this week with mostly ideological changes to welfare, justice, health and tax

1.        Spare bedroom penalty introduced for poor

2.        Thousands will lose access to legal aid
3.        Council tax benefit passes to local control
4.        NHS services commissioning changes
5.        Regulation of financial industry changes
6.        50p tax rate scrapped for high earners
7.        Disability living allowance scrapped
8.        Welfare benefits will no longer rise with inflation
9.        Welfare benefit to be capped
10.     Universal credit introduced

Grace

 

Hidden irretrievably within the blackest night

If hope is a star I can pluck from the heavens
It is now placed so far from my reach and sight
Only a flight of the soul may recapture its grace