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Quote by Nyani Nkrumah

“I could never imagine them weeping and hollering and fainting, because I knew only black folk did that. Surely we were the only ones to feel the pain deep down in our marrow so that it had to come forth, spewing up in moans and groans and chants, till we felt better. I wondered how they kept their pain all twisted and knotted up inside, like a corked bottle.”

Quote by Nyani Nkrumah

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Wade in the Water

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Nyani Nkrumah

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“Up in the bunker [a secret refuge that Manuel has selected and prepared for a potentially necessary escape from society], I will also have time for fishing and hunting. There will even be notes for Rosner. During my first exploratory outing, I had noticed an acacia; it grew in the type of clearing that emerges when a tree collapses. The bush, like a gallows, was hung with skeletons. Although the skeletons were small, I recoiled at first glance. This sometimes happens when we unexpectedly stumble on nature’s cruelty. Rosner views this as resentment. He compares nature to a festive kitchen where everyone both consumes and is consumed. Nothing perishes; the equation works out. ‘Everything fertilizes everything else,’ as the farmers say. If I am to believe Rosner, we live partly on the beings that we produce in our innards in order to digest them. That is how one might picture the demiurge: up there as a world spirit, with Olympian serenity, delighting in the raging of animals and the warring of men; down here as a pot-bellied man, who benefits from every consuming and being consumed. This of course releases me from pain as little as it does the grenadier whose leg is shot off for the greater glory of the king. As an anarch, I also have to steer clear of martyrdom. And for the historian, the issue of pain is fundamental.”

“Posed In Vein by Stewart Stafford O Stephanie! In your cruciform puppetry, Bloody veins stretched out wiry To relive in a bondage diary. Subject mapped as inked skin she wears, Decorating, desecrating olden snares. Each needle kiss, a line defined, A pinprick story rushes her mind. By candlelight, in her coven deep, Secrets webbed flies must keep, Spelled out straight in her hexing book, Consort Lenore gives a cryptic look. They tug the strings, the marionette, Caught in her captor's welcome net. In artificial light, a social moth's mien, A wrought, posed, fetishistic scene. The knots are tight, the ropes defined; Bodily and in private mind. This mutual art, a supplicant's plea, Cut into her Kinbaku diary. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

“What do I do with all this pain? Where do I place it? If I cannot give it to God, then who do I give it to? If I don’t get it out of me, then it will kill me.” ‘But I want to die, don’t I?’ Samyaza took his cheeks, held them. “You don’t want to die.” “I do.” “No, you don’t.” Samyaza’s thumb dragged along to catch one of Azazel’s tears. “You want this pain in you to die.” “I’m all pain now.”