Deb Curreen Author

My loving, big, funny brother        Native bird painting by Ezra Curreen                                                                                               When my brother died, we were all bereft. My whole family, extended whanau, friends and strangers near and far, were overnight, plunged into unbearable sadness and shock. The trauma lasted for years. My big, strong brother was gone. Life had become too hard for him, so he drove to his favourite beach, one night and ended his life. Quietly and gently. He was gone. In the immediate hours and days after his death, as we gathered at our family home to bid him farewell, his friends told stories about him. Funny stories I had never heard before. Hair-raising antic...

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...

I have just watched the Dylan movie, starring Timothee Chalamet, “A Complete Unknown.” I enjoyed hearing those old songs again and getting a bit more context of their creation, having been a Dylan fan since last century, songs that I have loved for many a year. The movie celebrated his musical success while only briefly touching on his formative years and significant relationships with women, notably Joan Baez but also, for the first time we see the complicated and doomed affair with Sylvie. Dylan read the movie script right through, met with the director to discuss the narrative and add some of his own before gave it the nod saying, "Go with God". Whether he has viewed the movie, to date, I do not know. Remember this is the man that famously won the Nobel Peace Prize  in Literature 2016, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”, then did not go to the award ceremony to receive his fabulous prize.  Bob Dylan has always been inte...

Wolves run at night, foxes swing from vines, thieves leave no traces, cameras missed their faces. I'm gonna blame the moon for all this, and I'm sorry, it's not really her fault, or his fault,  or theirs'  or even the mist that fell on our town this morning. 💗💘💙💚💛💜 But something nasty, this way has come, sparing few,  thrashing some, leaving tears in the gutter, making heros stutter. A shake of the head, nightmares in bed. It might be more than the moon this time, with wicked people,  marching in lines. 💔💀👽👿💥💦💦😟 The weirdness isn't over, the nasty just begun, spreading through the planet, mankind is undone. It's really not the moon's fault, a waning globe up there, it's mostly about the power struggles going on down here. I am really lost for words right now, I think this poem is done, I'm going to take a wander outside, and have a quiet lie-down in the sun.

 The colour has been stolen from my garden, the painters are to blame with their splotches and swatches of paint everywhere, masking the sunlight, blanketing the flowerbeds. The whole world is fading, and society needs an overhaul. A top story in the London papers reads, "I had casual sex for a whole year!" Really?! A grown-up woman said that, in the newspaper that will wrap my fish and chips tomorrow. Ugh! Morality is wilting beside the colorless flowers in my garden. Meanwhile, a dignitary has died. And just like unemployment, early childhood injuries are on the rise, The economy is receeding, while fast food chains and beauty salons flourish. Nobody says sorry anymore. I watch the painters sidle from my yard, closing the freshly painted black door behind them. They stole the colour from my garden,  and they didnt even say good-bye. So, I chew on yesterday's sausage roll, sharing it with my loyal dog. "I'm sorry," I say, patting her head. "I wish ther...

 "Last glass of karma, anyone?" the waiter formly known as 24 asks us. "I'll have one," I signal to 25. "Will that be with or without a slice of lemon?" "Depends?" Is it sour? I wonder to myself, questioning the universe, and God above, that laughing bitch called Life, and the Mistress of Karma. "Could I have a cherrie instead?" 25 nods. A sweet one please, I murmur to the burnt grass roots beneath my vegan sandals. Just joking. My sandals aren't vegan,  neither are my intentions. The burnt grass bothers me though. It didn't deserve this...this burning. How innocent is the grass and the planet? Gaza, the Ukraine, the homeless on the Auckland streets and Americans who got duped into voting for an orange man, instead of a black woman. I might skip the glass of Karma. "Give me whiskey on the rocks, smooth ones,"  I say, "the rocks and the whiskey." I anoint my heart with oakiness and settle back to wait for ...

 The cattle on a thousand hills  nestle against silent macrocarpa limbs as dusk creeps over the horizon. My gaze lingers on a settled harbour boats nodding in the last rays of the day, dogs bark from a distant farm,  drowning out the turkeys warble. 💖💥💧💦🐂🐑🐝 See you in the morning, hills of grace, skies of serenity, waters of friendship. Wake me up life, in all your fullness, with deep cups of caffeine in the dawn's parting light, as I bid a hearty good night, to the last glass of Shiraz.