Deb Curreen Author

I’ve been watching the news again on the terror-vision, the window of doom into my sitting room and I wonder if anywhere is sacred anymore.                                                 Do the sea lions know they are no longer protected?  that some fullah too fat to fish anymore is removing the protection from their lives, while children begin to starve on the playgrounds.                                                                                                  Who really cares? Shrugs a heartless coalition, as a couple of politicians turn their coats over on potholes, they’re never going to fix… and it’s time for their five-course lunch, that the taxpayers paid for. “Watch out kiwi and kakapo,” cries a bellbird, swinging from a brittle kowhai branch, as pine trees tagged for China fall around her home. “You’ll be next!” Raise your one-use cups of latte to a crumbling sky that doesn't know whether it's raining or crying for the death of   the seas it'sposed

These first days of the 21 st century are like a mighty, rushing wind, with fiery tongues, as thunder rolls across the oceans floors, and moons turn blood red in the sky, or hang blue in the heavens on sacred nights while the sun is darkened at midday, by the shadow of a dog that never bit no one, as we ask for a sign, and the universe is singing.   An iceberg shatters in the North and drifts slowly into a trembling eternity, while we all dance like there is no tomorrow, rolling in beds of wealth that we never deserved, poached from the lives of families we never knew. I wonder about hope, as I sit outside a church waiting for a sign from clouds that obscure the heavens.   They found a polar bear in a rubbish dump in Siberia- what a hell! She'd lost her babies, somewhere in the smog of humanity. How did it come to this? I cried on David Attenborough’s shoulder, while he turned another page, folding it over on mankind’s crumbling destiny.

  In 2019, I lost one of my best friends in the Christchurch mosque shooting. This is what the world is like now without her.  RIP Pikelet 💚💔 The light in my heart that was you There is a light in my heart, that searches for you, in a dark place of loss where the earth no longer holds colour, only shadows of a thousand yesterdays while faint laughter carries across eternity teasing my   memories.   The light in my heart listens, for that song rolling out on the radio, notes and lyrics pulling me back to those days of dancing, leaping, shouting, our spontaneity making the kitchen a dance floor of sweat, laughter, alcohol, heartbeats, more.   The light in my heart holds, my last email to you, the final poem I wrote, a shirt that you made for me, black and gold, too small now, and a handful of photos of you, always smiling, always dressed up, colourful and gay, happy beside me.   The light in my heart remembers, all the times you stayed wi

 As I stand in the place of our meeting, in a paddock of winnowing golden grasses, summer winds stroke my arms, while tall and silent mountains smile down upon me, the whispering voices speak to my heart and as I t all comes back,  i feel everything.   I kneel beside a riverbed of yesterdays,  waiting at night for the ghosts to embrace me. Yet still I wonder.... How can I say good-bye to you? Every you and every day, all the moments held in crystal nights, a love that never left me, but has waited here until today. I am back in the town where we met, on the streets that melt with the summer sunshine of January and a new years day, with hallowed homes and winding driveways, where my feet tussle with the dust and memories of forty years  waiting for the return, Of you, and me. All that is mine, I have carried with me until now, and I can't quite stand, the stillness of all that ever was and can never be again, pulsing in the air that I can barely breathe, seeing all this magnificence

 The roadie dust is thick down here, pulsing with memories, full of drifting voices from many decades, the times and tides, seasons and endings,  and we take Highway 6 and Highway 60, clickety-click, 66. Bingo! And all the while, the river sings to me songs of remembering, tunes of love, haunting lyrics of a thousand yesterdays and lost tomorrows. I am on a no-mans road of dreams. Road dust has called me home, stirring years and years and bloody years of time that sat, and waited, drawing me back here. The whispers I ignored, and the loves that yearned for me, waiting beneath the shifting clouds of a thousand nights, nestled in ancient forests, scattered over the riverbeds of eternity. The Waymaker has been here, so I am ready now, its time to face the dust, and a past I thought I wouldn't never meet again. But that roadie dust laughed when it saw me, chortling, "I remember you now, it's all coming back, you haven't changed and you're still full of life." &quo

 I have no self esteem... is a laughable line, from a terrible time, inside a dream that soon went dark, and I found my life and all that was dear, slide down the plughole, into a terrifying, nightmare. Like Stephen King had come to stay, bringing monsters that wanted to play, inside  my head and with my heart, as they messed  with my hopes my desires... they were running around,  all through the house  trying to turn my whole life into fire. I pushed them away, I closed the door, I forbade those creatures from crossing my floor. when down the chimney flew some bats, python snakes and tricked out cats. "We've come to take your esteem away, we're going to make your confidence pay." I looked at them, well fancy that, they'd pissed me off, I'd deal with that. I got my gun, I shot them down, their screams were heard all over town. "She's shooting bullshit," the locals said, "I hope she got them in the head." I sat down in my comfy chair, I