Featured Poet – Street Girl by Bonnie Parker

Bonnie, Clyde’s woman was an awesome poet

       

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

There was a time 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
Back there on the farm in Nebraska

I might have said yes to you then

But I thought the world was a playground

Just teeming with Santa Claus men

So I left the old home for the city

To play in its mad, dirty whirl

Never knowing how little of pity, It holds for a slip of a girl
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 I went

But that day I came in from the country

With my hair down my back in a curl

Through the length and the breadth of the city

There was never a prettier girl.
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

I might have sold them for a fortune

To some old sugar daddy with dough

But youth called to youth for its lover

There was plenty that I didn’t know
Then I fell for the “line” of a “junker”

A slim devotee of hope,

And those dreams in the juice of a poppy

Had got me before I could stop.

But I didn’t care while he loved me

Just to lie in his arms was a delight

But his ardour grew cold and he left me

In a Chinatown “hop-joint” one night.
Well I didn’t care then what happened

A Chink took me under his wing

And down there in a hovel of hell

I laboured for Hop and Ah-Sing

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
Don’t spring that old gag of reforming

A girl hardly ever goes back

Too many are eager and waiting

To guide her feet off of the track

A man can break every commandment

And the world will still lend him a hand

Yet a girl that has loved, but un-wisely

Is an outcast all over the land.
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

For I’m only a poor branded woman

And I can’t get away from the past

Good-bye and God bless you for asking

But I’ll stick out now till the last