POETRY BY SHARI X INSANITY

Shari Fridman goes by her pseudonym, Shari X Insanity. She is a 33-year-old poet/artist/author/writer from New Jersey. She graduated from Bergen Community College in 2015 with an Associate’s Degree in Cinema Studies, and her poetry has been published in BCC’s college literary magazine, Labyrinth, three times. After graduating, she was published in Bryan Oliver’s Turn Left at Main Street & Other Surreal Stories and also in Ivan Velez Jr.’s The Monsters of the Bronx, Volume 1. Her poems were published in Blood Moon Rising, The Horror Zine, and Dark Delights among others.

You can find her reciting and reading her original poems at coffeehouses’ Open Mic Nights across New Jersey. Her literary hero is Edgar Allan Poe, and she loves reading books, art, coffee, horror, gaming, yoga, rollerblading, concerts, metal music, and her two cats, Houdini and Doomy. She wants to thank her family for their creative support.

THE RAVEN’S SACRIFICE AS AN ASSASSIN OF JUSTIVE

A raven watches and protects the night
While perched on a nearby tree
She might appear as an ordinary black bird but nothing is what it seems
Within her dark eyes
You see her past, her soul, her difficult sacrifice
That she made several years ago
A warrior that turned evil, became rogue
She was an assassin who destroyed her entire kingdom
Because she didn’t agree to the greed that they succumbed or what they become
The sorceress of the town
Cursed her to be a raven for all eternity
Forcing her to roam as a bird with an unwanted immortality
Sadly, to this day, she’s lost within the skies’ stormy, gray clouds.

THE LEGEND OF MISTRESS MARY MACK

There was once a woman who dressed in all black,
Tied a high bun, with her loose hair strands,
Hanging from the nape of her neck.

There’s children nursery rhymes, and songs
Dedicated to her memory, and her name
And the children of the land, sang and played games, with their hands
Clapping their hands twice, and slapping their shoulders and knees
Sometimes even thrice, and repeating her name,
And certain keywords will do the trick.

They called her, Mistress Mary Mack, Mack, Mack
And she wore from head to toe, all black, black, black.
And had silver buttons, buttons, and buttons,
Down her back, back, back.

Little did, the children of this town know
How dark the story’s origins truly goes
And what became of her, in the end
For Mistress Mary Mack, who wore
Matching knitted mittens, mittens, mittens,
And had green-eyed, all-black mysterious kittens, kittens, kittens.

Mistress Mary Mack was actually a witch, witch, witch.
With eldritch powers that will bewitch, bewitch, bewitch.
And she haunted the entire land, including her village.
She asked her mother for fifty cents, cents, cents, to go into the local market
To buy herbs, to brew a potion, potion, potion,
So that her broom, broom, broom, could fly to the moon, moon, moon.
Her villagers came after her, with an angry mob, carrying branches, shovels, and torches.
And she disappeared, after she burned to flames, on the pyres in the ditch.

However, she magically vanished, and no one found
Found her body in the fires, and there was no sign of her.
Some say she uttered, chanted magical words of a spell, incantation.
And some say, someone cut her ropes, and she ran free.
And she ran nearby to the village’s dark black lake, and she mysteriously drowned.
Mistress Mary Mack is the woman dressed in black,
The witch that haunts the village, and the dark black lake’s waters,
The witch of the dark black lake, that wears silver buttons, and all black,
This is the legend of Mistress Mary Mack.