So Beloved, I'm still here and breathing!  My self-publishing journey can only be described as somewhat of a nightmare but friends have kept me engaged.  They know the journey I've been on.

     However, I am in the midst of taking control of my intellectual property and hope to have some 'good' news over the coming weeks as I get back to using my time more in the creative sense as 'writing is freedom'.  A lot been going on but I refuse to be held down where greedy folks prefer us to be.

     But for now, One Love and Yah's Blessings Always.

Patricia L Graham

15.09.25

Be Ye Verdana?

Flit and fly

Fly high, by an' by

Be, who you bee?

Why would you want to be a bee?

Being a busy bee buzzing with verbs

Before you be like a buzz word

Black gold on green

Stripes sure to be seen

Never fumble humble bumble

Verdana just be writing somethin'

So who you be?

Verdana honey, Bee?

UPDATES

Some AI Generated Images for my Stories follow:

First Lost Risen (2013)

Flight of Fantasy Collection (2013)

(Second Editions of the above and new stories in progress 2025)

(PDF for 'A Rhythm of Life' poetry collection also being reviewed. Has been out there 'free' for years since 2013)

Hellfire and Sand – Patricia L Graham © 2018

City of Stories

Alex buried his head, tried not to breathe despite his gas mask.  Bursts of Turkish artillery shells impacted the sandbagged trench dug by himself and other volunteers from the West Indies Regiment.  Lifts of sand slapped helmets, assaulted unprotected dry lips.  He needed to survive this day, having vanquished the last bout of dysentery for heaven’s sake.  His family had to see him return, preferably in one piece.  He remembered how his mother would softly pray when he was ill as a child recovering from fever.  Who would have thought they would end up fighting in ancient places read about in the Bible!

His father was ex-military, why he volunteered.  Resolve took its first hit, battling dire cold on the ship to England.  The second came at Seaford, knowing men who succumbed to pneumonia and other afflictions before and during training.  Fate blew them from hot to cold and back, through a barrage of foreign tongues and customs from Belgium to the Middle East.

What he wouldn’t have done for a drink of cool fresh water as he peered through barbed-wire to No Man’s Land beyond.  Rumour had it wells were in Gaza.  They imagined marching in the murderous heat weighed down by weaponry, uniforms and heavy survival packs to search for them.  Bully beef, teeth cracking biscuits and petrol flavoured tea had sustained life this far.  His farm animals were better fed.  Hard to get food parcels in the desert from Jamaica with all the blockades.  Better to refute thoughts of coconut water, ackee and saltfish with roast breadfruit.  Tobacco and SRD rations helped block hunger pangs some. 

Another burst, closer than the last, clearing settled flies.  He shouted for Moses who in the lull responded, “We safe man!”  No friendly body parts flung their way.  His eyes burned, ears rang as Allied artillery and strategic tanks returned fire.

Sleep starved, belligerent aircraft disturbed star pierced nights where Draco once swept before Orion hunted, saif al-jabbar.  Longing for a bath, a shave, such basic luxuries in lands where sand storms and shifting dunes know no borders; the sun commanding each day, setting quick, respecting neither races nor creeds.  How could he have risked so much, journeyed so far and not see Jerusalem?

His thirst for alcohol grew, banishing pain, blood, stench; kept death at bay there, but taking that legacy and the need to ration home, inflicting harsh war disciplines on his mystified family.  Excessive drinking led to the shooting death of an innocent in a drunken daze, resulting in his beloved brothers leaving the country for new lives in America following the scandal.  His imprisonment further impacted the local community – no jobs from the family businesses.  Two of his sons would later travel abroad to find work: more collateral casualties of a war that altered so many destinies long after victory was declared.  A child of empire, he could not have reckoned how much living up to his father’s ideals would ultimately cost.