The Street Girl (A Moral Danger Poem) Poem by Bonnie Elizabeth Parker

Possibly Bonnie's poem, but also possibly a 'moral danger' poem by an anonymous author which resonated with Bonnie. This poem's name and subject may be influenced by Stephen Crane's 1893 novel ''Maggie, A Girl Of The Streets''. Bonnie's own three poems ''The Story Of Suicide Sal'', ''The Fate Of Tiger Rose'' and ''The Prisoner'', borrow from the structure of this poem.


01:
You don't want to marry me, Honey
Though just to hear you ask me is sweet
If you did you'd regret it tomorrow
For I'm only a girl of the street

02:
Time was when I'd gladly have listened
Before I was tainted with shame
But it wouldn't be fair to you, Honey
Men laugh when they mention my name

03:
Back there on the farm in Nebraska
I might have said, ''yes'' to you then
But I thought that the world was a playground
Just teeming with Santa Claus men

04:
So I left the old home for the city
To play in it's mad dizzy whirl
Never knowing how little of pity
It holds for a slip of a girl

05:
You think I'm still good-looking, Honey?
But no, I am faded and spent
Even Helen of Troy would look seedy
If she followed the pace that I went

06:
But that day I came in from the country
With my hair down my back in a curl
Through the length and breadth of the city
There was never a prettier girl

07:
I soon got a job in the chorus
With nothing but looks and a form
I had a new man every evening
And my kisses were thrilling and warm

08:
I might have sold them for a fortune
To some old Sugar Daddy with dough
But youth calls to youth for it's lover-
There was plenty that I didn't know

09:
Then I fell for the ''line'' of a ''junker''
A slim devotee of hop
And those dreams in the juice of a poppy
Had got me before I could stop

10:
But I didn't care while he loved me
Just to lie in his arms was delight
But his ardor grew cold and he left me
In a Chinatown ''hop Joint'' one nite

11:
Well I didn't care then what happened
A Chinese man took me under his wing
And down in a hovel of Hell-
I labored for hop and Ah-Sing

12:
Oh, no, I'm no longer a ''Junker''
The Police came and got me one day
And I took the one cure that is certain
That island out there in the bay

13:
Don't spring that old gag of reforming
A girl hardly ever comes back
Too many are eager and waiting
To guide her feet off of the track

14:
A man can break every commandment
And the world still will lend him a hand
Yet, a girl that has loved, but un-wisely
Is an outcast all over the land

15:
You see how it is, don't you Honey?
I'd marry you now if I could
I'd go with you back to the country
But I know it won't do any good

16:
For I'm only a poor branded woman
And I can't get away from the past
Good-by, and God bless you for asking
But I'll stick it out now till the last

END


Historical Note:

This poem is perhaps Bonnie's own autobiographical account of her 'fast' life in Dallas, written before she joined Clyde's gang. It is also quite possibly a 'moral danger' poem of the type generated by educators for school students and young people of that time, with the authors remaining anonymous. The time period that this poem would apply to Bonnie is 1928 to early 1932. During 1928 and 1929 Bonnie also worked at Marco's Cafe, an upmarket cafe in downtown Dallas, on the south side of Main Street some 30 yards east of Market Street and a block east from the Dallas court house, where she has a beautiful posed professional photo of her behind the counter serving Sheriff Hal Hood, no less.

During 1928 to 1930 Bonnie always carried her personal Smith & Wesson, Model 10, Two Inch, .38 caliber pistol. After this was confiscated by the police when she went to visit Clyde in jail (and got herself searched with the police laying no charges over it but just confiscating it) , she replaced it with a Colt, Detective Special, .38 caliber pistol, which she always carried and which was found taped to her inner thigh right up by her crotch, ''where no gentleman officer would look'', on the day she was killed.

She was noted as always being well dressed in a way that could not be accounted for by a waitress salary (though she actually lived with her mother Emma and aunt Lilie, who would have placed an emphasis on dressing well as both were stylish independent and employed women) . On the back of Bonnie's own typewritten copy of this poem (Bonnie handwrote everything and is not known to have had a typewriter so how this poem, if actually hers, got to be contemporaneously typewritten is unknown, perhaps she typewrote it for fun on a friend's typewriter) , she is practicing her signature ''Bonnie Parker'' and also her 'street girl' or 'city moll' alias signature ''Bonnie Jean''. Her younger sister's first names are 'Billie Jean'. This was a clever tactic to confuse people following Bonnie, with her sister (sorry there's no Bonnie Jean here but we do have a Billie Jean) . It's similar to the tactic of a number of people all using the same name.


Assuming this is in fact Bonnie's autobiographical poem, we proceed with a possible commentary as follows (if it isn't, then this commentary shows why the poem may have resonated with Bonnie in light of her own experiences) :

01:
Bonnie tells that she is not interested in suitors. But she loves to hear them ask her. But she assures them that if they did they would soon regret it, as they are only really fired up by their lust for her image and persona, not the real 'girl of the street' Bonnie with 'baggage' behind the image. Although in actual fact Bonnie's 'baggage' was small and mostly inconsequential, but the perceived social stigma traps a young person in their own (socially conditioned) mindset, from which they don't yet have the social experience and life experience to contextually appraise and evolve from.

02:
Bonnie had a very strong feeling that she was forever now ''tainted with shame'' because her husband Roy had abandoned her and had also been convicted and sent to the penetentiary. She tells that she now, feels like a ''woman of shame'' who with this background would only be an embarrassment to any man she would marry, and that she did not want to hurt an innocent man, this way.

Bonnie was brought up with Baptist Church and Sunday-School and had taken in their social messaging very profoundly and literally.

Even though she was abandoned by her husband, it was not her who had abandoned him, so she made up her mind to continue to wear her wedding ring (as she had resolved that there would never be another man in her life after Roy) and was wearing it on the day she was killed (she was also wearing Clyde's diamond ring which she wore as a 'partner ring' having resolved to have no other gangland partner after Clyde) . Towards the end, Bonnie also felt abandoned by God, but it was not her who had abandoned Him, on the day she was killed she was wearing a cross and also a three acorn brooch representing the holy trinity.

03:
In this poem Bonnie mentions Nebraska in the sense of ''out there in the pure countryside''. Bonnie's actual ''Nebraska'' was her grandparent's little rented farmstead on the north side of Eagle Ford Road (now Singleton Boulevard) , the third house west of Harris Ave which ran north along the west side of the Vilbig gravel pit (now Fish Trap Lake) and west of Fish Trap Road which ran north along the east side of the Vilbig gravel pit, in rural West Dallas, across the Trinity river from Dallas City.

04:
In this poem Bonnie alludes to having lived a 'fast' life in the city after Roy left her. But she also notes that there was a difference between her dreams and the reality she found (in her dreams ''the world was a playground teeming with santa clause men'') . This life was a 'transactional' interaction with people where each 'used' the other (which is the typical nature by which people interact) and the true love and care that Bonnie had grown up with in her family was absent in these new people she everywhere met. Bonnie always had many beaus and went on many dates and to many dances with other men, despite being married to Roy, all the while feeling ''bored to death'', with her overactive imagination always craving more.

05:
Bonnie was very sensitive about her looks. She had negative 'body image' issues. Bonnie confirms here that she lived 'fast' and 'hard'. She always did! She was the top of her class at school, the best and friendliest most willing to please waitress, the best company to the various men she accompanied and then the best and most loyal 'gangster gal' companion to Clyde Barrow.

06:
She says that she came into the city with ''my hair down my back in a curl'' in the sense that she came into the city 'innocent' and 'naive' to it's ways. Bonnie in reality never had long hair, she had always had short hair, as a child she had the typical children's 'French Bob' and later as an adult always had her hair in the short 'flapper' styles. Here Bonnie confirms that she was self-aware that she was pretty. Bonnie was an innocent and naive country girl until she moved to stay at a 'former house' rooming house on Olive Street, which was a back street of Dallas' glitzy Elm Street 'Theatre Row'. It was here while living on Olive Street that Bonnie began her mindset drift to 'Life's Other Side', developing an attraction to and glamorization of the underworld as she perceived it. That Bonnie wrote a poem of her Olive Street hood 'The Prostitutes Convention' as the second of her ten poems, right after her gangster gal alter ego poem of 'The Story Of Suicide Sal' and right before her underworld 'city moll' alter ego poem of 'The Fate Of Tiger Rose', shows how important Bonnie considered her formative Olive Street time was to her mindset drift to 'Life's Other Side'. In Bonnie's time the typical female vocation counterpart to the male vocation gangster was that of prostitute. However, Bonnie dreamed of taking on the male vocation of gangster despite being female. Clyde made Bonnie's dream come true by taking her on as a partner of his gang (Clyde had grown up with his sister Nell as his childhood companion and enjoyed the female vibe and was partial to having a female companion in his gang) .

07:
Bonnie confirms in this poem that with her pretty looks she soon got a job in the 'chorus' which is code for the 'adult life' of the city. She confirms that she was highly sought after by men and that she satisfied them well ''my kisses were thrilling and warm''. Whether whatever she actually did do qualified as prostitution or just very liberal dating on her part, is debatable (there is no contemporaneous police record of her being known for prostitution activity) . She certainly went to dances and had beaus... ''she always had beaus''. After Bonnie was killed, many people claimed that Bonnie had been well known in Dallas nightlife before she went off with Clyde. Although Bonnie's mother Emma emphatically denied that this was so, it seems Bonnie's mother was not really in the know of all that Bonnie was up to.

08:
In this poem Bonnie confirms she understood her value well (she woke up to her value when she started working at Marco's Cafe and experienced the customers flirting with her, she also developed a large part of her adult social confidence here) , and that she knew well that if she wanted to, she could 'sell' her looks and form to an ''old Sugar Daddy with dough'', having no doubt received proposals, but that she was after young love ''youth calls to youth for it's lover'', and that in itself is a complex plethora of positives and negatives, either way, and many not so obvious, ''there was plenty that I didn't know''.

09:
In this poem Bonnie alludes to trying drugs and being in love with a 'junker' (it is known that Bonnie drank alcohol and smoked heavily, whether she actually experimented with other drugs is unknown but certainly quite possible during her Dallas city time, although not while she was on the run with Clyde who was averse to drugs) . Bonnie had obviously begun 'flirting' more intimately with 'Life's Other Side' when she got a tattoo, which was a very 'forward' thing for a girl of Bonnie's time to do and meant interacting with 'characters' to set up the tattoo appointment and go to a 'seedy' place where the tattoo was performed.

10:
This 'junker' abandoned her when he got bored with her (typical) . Though interesting point, if this junker had also been her pimp and she a prostitute, he would have been less inclined to abandon her.

11:
Someone 'saved her' but it came with a 'catch', she had to work for the hop she was addicted to. So Bonnie would turn up there at times she could spare and work for her hop, in what she described as a 'hovel of hell', obviously some run down grubby place, a big contrast to her day job at Marco's Cafe.

12:
This went on until she ended up being arrested by the police in a raid on the hop den and taken down to the jail, where as an employee at the hop den and known to Lawmen at the jail as that friendly waitress who also worked across the road at Marco's Cafe, she would have been quickly released without any charges. This would have shaken Bonnie enough to get her to give up her hop after that. There is no contemporaneous police record of Bonnie being known for drug activity.

13:
She warns in the poem that very few girls 'come back' once they go down that slippery slope of hop addiction, even if they say they will, it's just words, there's just too much temptation, just too many 'hop heads' eager to ''guide them off of their feet'' and right back into it.

14:
Then Bonnie emphasizes how much Roy's abandonment has affected her by alluding to the intense social shame of divorce, and how men in general are held to such unfairly different standards to women, she sees it all the time in her 'fast' city life: ''a man can break every commandment and the world still will lend him a hand. Yet, a girl that has loved, but un-wisely, is an outcast all over the land.''

15:
Bonnie tells us that she feels it's pointless for her to re-marry, as when people find out about her past, she will just be an embarrassment to any man, sometime in the future, especially so in any small country place, where gossip is rife and social stigma is more acutely felt. This is so sweet and thoughtful of Bonnie. Bonnie doesn't want to hurt anyone. But by setting her standards so, this will result in Bonnie mostly hurting herself instead and eventually destroying herself as it will inevitably cause her to drift more and more to 'life's other side'.

16:
So she had resolved that she did not want to deal with this and had given up all ambition to re-marry. But heart-breakingly, Bonnie so kindly thanks all her would be suitors: ''Good-bye, and God bless you for asking.'' She had the example of her mother Emma who was widowed and decided never to re-marry. Like her mother, Bonnie also decided to ''stick it out now till the last''. That is, to go her own way till the end. But this solitary path is sure to lead to eventual boredom in the long life ahead for a young person and this boredom is fertile ground for their imagination.


Additional Notes:

Bonnie was a very beautiful and cute small (4' 11') petite (90lb) red headed girl. But she had 'body image issues'. She considered that her features were coarse and tough and that her eyes were somewhat hard (this can be somewhat discerned from her photos on close inspection, although she did lose weight and become more sleek featured and muscular while on the run, ''gaining muscular definition of a kind seen more often in boys''. She craved attachment and was very attached to her mother Emma.

At Bonnie's funeral an anonymous person sent a bouquet of lilies, with the request that they be placed in Bonnie's hands and that she be buried with them. Bonnie's mother Emma agreed and this was done. So Bonnie was buried holding the lilies of an unknown stranger, in essence 'by someone on behalf of everyone', who cares and loves her, indeed a beautiful gesture.


BONNIE'S LETTER TO HER 'HONEY' (CLYDE BARROW)

''Just think, Honey, if you and he were to get twenty-five years in the pen! You would be a broken old man, friendless and tired of living when you did get out. Everyone would have forgotten you but me- and I never will- but I should more than likely be dead by then. And think, dear, all your best years spent in solitary confinement away from the outside world. Wouldn't that be terrible? Dear I know you are going to be good and sweet when you get out. Aren't you, Honey? They only think you are mean. I know you are not, and I'm going to be the very one to show you that this outside world is a swell place, and we are young and should be happy like other boys and girls instead of being like we are. Sugar, please don't consider this advice as from one who is not capable of lending it, for you know I'm very interested and I've already had my day, and we're both going to be good now- both of us.''


Note: This letter indicates that Bonnie feels comfortable with pursuing Clyde because he has sinned and she therefore does not feel that she will be an embarrassment to him. She also assures him that she has 'already had her day', so that he won't feel he'll be a problem to her chances, reputation or future.

Bonnie wanted Clyde to join her and ''be good'' (probably more like that she wanted to introduce him to her city nightlife circuit and together with him develop her ''city moll'' lifestyle fantasy (for which she knew she needed a man as her 'side') , all the while showing him a safer way to get money, and he had every chance to do that as he was released from jail ''free'' in February 1932. But Clyde chose to resume his usual outlaw lifestyle for which he already had extensive existing underworld contacts (sure the police were irritating him with their ongoing attention, but he was after all a known underworld 'baby gangster', so what else could he in all fairness expect) . So Bonnie instead made her free choice to nevertheless join him in his outlaw lifestyle as his gangster gal companion, cross over openly and irreversibly to ''life's other side'' and assist him with and immerse herself into his life of crime, with suicide as both their end games (as both knew at the outset of their journey 'along this road' that they could from the law 'never be free'. Bonnie did claim to her mother that ''I did not realize Mama'' and that ''long before I was ready to leave him, the path for me was blocked and my name was forever chalked up with Clyde's''. But Bonnie only said that to pacify her mother Emma. In reality though, from the very outset ''they made up their minds, if the roads were all blind, they wouldn't give up 'till they died''.