Deb Curreen Author

 thunder and rainbows the things that matter while the family dog slumbers beneath my untidy desk and steam curls from the fresh coffee in my mug. rain and mud powercuts and lightning a fire in the grate snow on the mountains in a town called home a sea too dangerous to swim. blossoms, raindrops and soggy clothes on the line a choir of birdsong cuts through the dimness of an uncanny spring day. a flicker of hope as I see the sun squint into my bedroom dapples of colour on the floor and the dog runs outside splashing across the sodden lawn. the thunder ceases and a rainbow evaporates. the things that matter.

Feminists are currently fighting their big girl pants off  to keep the ground they have  hard won over several decades. Donning big boots,  off they go again to fight another fight, a bit more weaponised than 50 years ago, but still in fear and trembling of what the future may hold for their daughters, granddaughters, sisters, friends. It's disheartening to hear our sisters are still chanting and waving placards that say, "My body, my rights, my decision....my life." I read one statement that said, "Woman's rights ARE human rights." Whoever said that women aren't human? What a travesty and at guess, the chauvinist men in power still making decisions for women that suit men. Or just power hungry blokes trying to teach us a lesson, "put us in our place."  I was pondering the biblical view of women and the disrespect and mistreatment goes right back to the Garden of Eden, when Adam, on being sprung eating the fruit that he had been told not to, sa

FEMINISM -    the belief in social, economic, and political  equality  of the sexes. Although largely originating in the West, feminism is  manifested  worldwide and is represented by various institutions committed to activity on behalf of  woman's rights and interests. Just for something different, I thought I would tackle one of society's biggest sacred cows, feminism. Note, sacred cow, not bull, though some of those bulls might get knocked out during my musings - using strong words, of course, not bullets. I grabbed this simple definition of feminism from the Britannica site, hopefully a woman wrote it but it seems to sum it all up in a few brief sentences - social, economic, political equality and the right to make decisions regarding healthcare, our bodies, employment opportunities, etc. All the things our strong matriarchs have fought for and won in the past 100 years or more. Women now have a stronger voice, and we may even see a woman President in the United States ne

days of heaven days like this the blue sky is glimmering natures bliss. thanks for breathe to God I give another moment the chance to live counting blessings one by one all in nature beneath the sun days like heaven yesterday has passed may we enjoy each moment let the summer last today my refrain is, short, sweet and thankful true and ever hopeful in this goodness I will remain

grasping at the wind in Spring equinox days and longer nights, man counts his achievements over twenty one centuries of civilisation... the ground warms up  seas swell higher and mankind has lost it's kindness. I live by an empty church- the graveyard holds more life. My dog chases a rabbit into wild bushes. and I pick fresh flowers by the headstones. Puffy clouds hold the balance of sunlight and rain,  hail scatters outside new buildings full of neon. But bombs fall from that same sky in the Middle East and children cry in the dirt. But there are still blossoms petals fall at my feet, yesterday a rainbow arced over a highway full of potholes while my car kept moving. I say my prayers, and wait for answers... a fat pigeon sings on my fence. I feel the wind blow warmly through my hair... fulfilling dreams of justice.

 Pohutukawa. Tree of life. Beautiful and grand, idling in the light of approaching dusk, standing sentient, watchful, a guard beside the ocean's shore You hold the pulse of the moon and sea in your arms, the carefree waves that carry salty promises to thee. I stand on shaky rocks. Oh wide and curling waters, I'm at your mercy. I pray under a silent sky of blue. waiting for answers in the shadows,  tangled in the dappled branches, as I clutch the rustling leaves of the Pohutukawa. Tree of  Life.

  I prayed for you last night, my Bosom buddy of a lifetime, while driving home in the dark, alone, I felt the tears in my soul, the ones you were shedding for you darling, who now lies ill and wanting. I stopped my car, as anguish clutched my throat, and I cried the sorrow I know you cannot bear. Then I prayed for you again. 💗💖💦😢😘🐝🐕🍓🍒 I drove home fast, last night, wanting to get out of the darkness, yearning for my warm, safe bed. Yet worry chased me up the highway... had I prayed enough? I was soon home,  off that black highway, wrapped in comfort,  ready for sleep, but still, in the darkness of the night, from the sanctuary of my heart... I prayed one last time, for you again. 

 I don't watch a lot of news, anymore... or read a paper with bold headlines, beating me about the face with gloom, death ricocheting around the globe, storming my brain, filling the air that I breathe which creates a world of pain, for life as we now know it. ❤😒🌠🌋🐸 It makes me blue, the news... red with anger,  black with sadness,  as real life images from the battlefields of families, struggling in the furnace of affliction, bombard me,  until it feels like the end of the world inside my soul. So I quit the news, for golden snatches of peace in my heart... gathering like autumn leaves on the earth, sending glittering rays of hope and solace into my mind. I've blocked that drain, the  misery they call news... with carefree trips to the ocean, walking in the hills, picking handfuls of freesias,  with their heaven sent fragrance that floods my house. I have filtered my internet letterbox, halting the scourge of alerts and highlights. I play gentle music of the heart, kaleido

  In the scrappiness of winter there is beauty in the garden, glowstick bursts of colour, as if Heaven herself has painted the earth this morning, reflections of hope, inklings of spring. I look to the skies and I see a rainbow of happiness beaming beneath the heavy clouds with a promise of more sun shinings  for the morrows yet to come. I praise winter for the rains while birds sing in barren trees joyous and alive grateful that worms still wriggle and bugs still crawl so there is breakfast again this morning. Yes, the mud still puddles and the clouds try to frown while the clouds begin to part and I wear gumboots outside searching for hope and glory, again, amongst the scrappiness of winter in the garden.

 The skies outside are burning, the grass on my lawn has been swallowed by Mud. Down the road, there are highways of mayhem, bolts of public opinion jam the flyovers, thoughts are rear-ended by vehicles of outrage every day, bottlenecks of conflict and arguments. There is an acceleration of madness in the world right now, coming to a town near you. 🌘🔥💣💔😓🌵🐞🐸💥🌒🌈 Screens flicker all day long with ultra-violent beams of mottled truths and sticky facts, brainwashing dialogues roll up and down  blurring our vision. Accelerated madness sashaying daily in the pockets of our youth,  swinging in the handbags of middle age, sliding across the dashboard of the uber I now sit in. Pop goes the weasel of reason.                                                           🌘🔥💣💔😓🌵🐞🐸💥🌒🌈 However.... on the flipside of chaos where calmness still walks, we find children, candy cane, popcorn and music. There are parks with lily ponds and swans who sing, a song of redemption to a future gl

  As sure as the Iris smiles in my garden, is my promise to send you her face. As she beckons the sun to come down upon the Earth,  to pull out the colours,  that's when I will call, "Whaea, the winter has gone, come see the spring." The moment I see the gold unfurl amongst the green  with emboldened stems painting serenity for me, and for you I will  fast-post pics of her happiness to your home. Faith hope and love, the greatest of these, love, while iris faces glow in the storms of life. Here is hope, whaea, for a day without clouds and a Heaven come to earth in the faces  of our garden flowers.

It's your birthday today, you would have been 70 and it feels ridiculous now to think about all the mad things that we did when we were young, but hey, I've penned a few words for you, sprinklings of love, like toppings on a donut, Lashings of jam on pikelets, a cool ginger ale at the end of a spring night. Because my heart leaked on the pages for you, when you went away, snatched from us, one terrible Friday in March 2019, just before my birthday (which was two Saturdays later). That month feels ruined now but still, I have the chaos of colour that was you, the joyful noise that filled a room from your lips, memories locked down, inside my heart. 💘💚🍩🍉🐞🐸🐝 I run out of words, trying to capture you, I wrote a book (of poems) and dedicated it to you and gave you a whole chapter, at the back. 'cause while you were a front row diva, you rarked it up in the back - a Back Row Rebel. Lines for Lynn, Poems for Pikelet, a Shout for the Shaheed that you were. Now a void in the

   I will go down to the beach today, down to the sea on those craggy rocks to stare the waves down, dip my toes in ice cold pacific blue water, to dream for a while and remember you. I will walk alone across the chilly rocks, and stare at a silent ocean that shivers and roils, at the time and tide that is waiting for me. I will find the darkest rock to perch on and hold your life in my arms, as memories of you gather around me,  singing to me in time with the gentle waves lapping at my feet, while the pining seagulls drift on the arctic winds of winter overhead, I imagine the winds blowing down from Ireland today,  I don't know if that's even true. But this is an ode, and we're Irish, so we can say whatever we want to. 🍀 💛💚💘🍀 I will stand by the sea today and watch... the melding colours of aqua depths, swirl, unfettered and free, as I write something new in my head, to take home to the table where I will sit, and think about the books and songs I have yet to write, t

Ban war and all who sail on that stinking, sinking ship of fools with muskets, swords, swearwords, filthy rum and murder. Those killers on every continent, waking at dawn, having a yawn, grabbing guns, making puns  about how many lives they're going to slay today. Bloody fools. They tried to ban the bomb, you know, decades ago, woman especially, didn't want to lose another son, another brother  or see their sister place the cap of widowhood  on her stooped and weeping head. "BAN THE BOMB" the masses shouted, flags, posters, banners touted, and the protesters marched and marched, for miles and days, wearing out footwear, their cries and the music, slowly gathering into a worldwide malaise. "Give peace a chance," John sang, we all sang too, clapping, chanting, hoping  praying. Come on and lay down your weapons, your nightmares of destruction, wrought by dirty rotten governments trying to rule the world and not save it. And we're all out of words as we pass

 I miss Summer, with all her rays of warm sunshine, falling down on me, calling to me from the beach where the waters say, "swim, swim, catch this wave... and this one and this one",  while sand teases my toes beneath a cloudless sky of  happiness. "Come back Summer," I murmur and shiver beneath the heavy blankets of a winter morning, while the temperature reads 4 but feels like 2 degrees of "stay inside". It's still cold and dark out there, and the clouds have let the heat escape during the night. I think the sunshine has gone to Bermuda, kidnapped by the triangle. However will we ransom her back. Four degrees, feels like three, must be two. I'm not ready to go out into that day without the summer, my friend, my hot companion,  the season that makes life fun. "Please come back," I say, wiping the condensation from my eyes. "Drive the mud away, bring back the flowers." I miss you Summer, I say to myself, one last time, shaking m

Look at the Liars, with their pants on fire. Serves you right, you human blight.   Taint on the horizon, sty in the eye; wrecking the day, with your pork pie lie.   Go reap bad karma! Get hit by a stone! Live your life with honesty, leave good people alone.   Look at the Liars with their pants on fire, shame about the hole in my bucket, or else I might have saved you – liar, liar.

Every year, at the end of a long cold night in June, I write... A little something new and unheard about you and me, how much I miss you and this year, I thought about all the things that would be better, if you were still here.   The light would be brighter, and the sun would stay till the end of every day, not fading, as it does, by mid-morning blurred by tears. Nights would be short and warm, as the dark sky above glittered, while teardrops held diamonds and pearls lay on the ground.   The skip would return to my dance, as my laughter reached the high notes, staying in the room for longer than the time it takes to drink a dark coffee. Christmas, Easter, birthdays, all of our gatherings, no longer half-full anymore, and long weekends especially this one in June would lose their sting, as life became better with you still here.   I dream of the music you could be playing, with your mates, the bands and with your nephews, "yo

I'm on another night out, in the local cafe, with my bestie, sipping wine, nibbling nibbles, missing a mate, lamenting her absence, scorning her loss, wondering what went wrong, with her. But She did post something that was private, about us, set to public "When it comes to friends, it's not all wine and roses, carrot cakes  and drunken choruses on a floating boat in the harbour," my Bestie said. "Sometimes pots get thrown, flowers die and the wine gives you a bloody headache." "The boat makes you seasick and there are sharks in the harbour," I offer, as I am pouring her more sparkling wine. Rose, the pink stuff, meant for holidays and chatty talk with "the girls". Not for funerals, and certainly not for a friend who posted something private, set to public "Babes can  be bitches," a stranger from another table chimed in. We looked askance at this someone new. She drank red. Serious about life then, or worked too hard, trying to

Old friends is a place, in your heart, like battered suitcases, carried from town to town, to home and back. Full of pictures, laughter, sad times and wine with crackers, the tears from hard days and nights.   We carry old friends, never leaving them behind or in a dumpster, tied up in plastic sacks, driven away from and never looking back. We save that for enemies. Old friends come with us, wrapped carefully like precious bone china, stored in the cupboards of our heart and clearly labelled, Fragile.   One day we find them again, and we bring them out to wine and dine with again. We remember, oh we remember and it’s still too funny but not sad, well a bit. We are grateful that we lived, to watch another sun set, over another meal together. Sitting on the suitcases of our lives, unwrapping the precious and the fragile, comforted by the familiar, sharing the dust of lives thoroughly lived.

I swim in the waters of friendship,  letting their kindness wash o ver me, drinking the praise, eating the mem o ries, exquisite m o rse l s that I keep in a trinket b o x beside my bed-  la Familia What a bun fight at every Christmas, missed birthdays and never a call when I need y o u,  la Familia But still that bl o o d it sticks I find puddles in my kitchen, dr o ps in the trinket b o x, tang l ed in my hair, smeared  o n the wa l l s  o f my s o u l then s ometimes, the twain meet  Gentle  rivers meet the   o ceans on a quiet day, fresh water swirling into briny waves...la Familia...salt and light H20 meets plasma, night kisses day and sometimes the two become one. But not for long, la Familia with swords drawn, duels at dawn, bloody mess and mothers cry wet tears  as the clouds pull the ocean away from the river, memories wash out to sea and friends don't look back. Blood is no longer thicker than the waters that have become as bitter as Mara, while friends drink wine, white

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

  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