Bonnie Elizabeth Parker

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker Poems

Bonnie Elizabeth Parker Biography

Famous as Bonnie & Clyde, Bonnie wrote ten poems into a bank book (The First National Bank Of Burkburnett Texas) during her two month stay in the Kaufman County Jail in 1932. Some of these ten poems are her own compositions, while others are the poems of other poets. The ten poems in the order Bonnie chose to write them are: 1. The Story Of Suicide Sal (Bonnie's Poem, her famous alter ego as a gangster gal) 2. The Prostitutes Convention (Bonnie's Poem, set in her Olive St Dallas neighborhood) 3. The Fate Of Tiger Rose (Bonnie's Poem, imagining her alter ego as an underworld moll) 4. I'll Stay (Religious style wedding or loyalty vow, perhaps Bonnie's poem or perhaps a poem by another author whose theme of loyalty Bonnie loved) 5. From Shadow - Sun (poem by Agnes L. Pratt, religious style life philosophy) 6. Bravery (Bonnie's Poem, telling us Bonnie was aware Roy was dabbling in crime) 7. The Hobo's Last Ride (poem credited to A. L. Kirby, liberally scattered with railroad technical terms of the era. Bonnie didn't understand the meaning of 'waste' so substituted it with 'coal') 8. The Girl With The Blue Velvet Band (poet unknown, possibly a convict, San Francisco circa 1900) 9. When! ! (poet unknown, humorous doggerel about a wandering husband) 10. People Will Talk (poem by Mary E. Harris) Taken together, this collection of poems which Bonnie selected and the order in which she selected them, give an insight into Bonnie's mind. Bonnie is also credited with writing four other known poems: 1. The Street Girl (credited to Bonnie and possibly Bonnie's autobiographical poem of her life before Clyde, but also quite possibly a 'moral danger' poem by another author, the street girl subject of which Bonnie came to identify with, perhaps influenced by Stephen Crane's 1893 novel ''Maggie, A Girl Of The Streets) . Type written on both sides of one page (strange as Bonnie is not known to have had a typewriter and is unlikely to have bothered typing her poems, preferring pencil and paper, perhaps this was a handout to students at Cement City High?) and signed by Bonnie with both her signature 'Bonnie Parker' and her alias signature 'Bonnie Jean' (but these signatures were just practice signatures on a blank side of the folded up page) . Billie Jean saved this page as a cherished memento of Bonnie. 2. The Outlaws (believed to be Bonnie's Poem written while on the run with Clyde, about an imaginary encounter between Clyde and 'Billy The Kid') . A book about 'Billy The Kid' was found in their death car when they were killed. It is also possible that this poem was written by another author in contemporaneous style, because the poem is a somewhat negative lament towards Clyde, while Bonnie is known to have avoided being negative towards Clyde, although the poem does accurately say what Bonnie privately felt inside. 3. The Trail's End (Bonnie's famous autobiographical poem of Bonnie & Clyde) . Hand written by Bonnie on pages of a green bound 1933 diary which were then torn out and given to her mother Emma Parker on their last meeting on 6th May 1934. There is another hand written copy of the poem on the pages inside this same diary along with a poem in reply written by Clyde. 4. The Prisoner (Bonnie's last poem, she expected capture similar to Blanche) Hand written by Bonnie in the same green bound 1933 diary as 3. The Trails End, above. While writing the last stanza of this poem Bonnie breaks down with sad emotion, her writing turning to scrawl as she wrote....'many be the innocent victims, and their sorrows are not few, who have sacrificed their freedom, for a crime they didn't do'. Bonnie scribbled a profuse amount of verse on scraps of paper while on the run with Clyde, to pass the time. Most of these scraps of paper she then crumpled up and threw away. Bonnie and Clyde went down together at 9: 15 am on 23 May 1934 riding side by side, as they were shot and killed in ambush by six officers of the law, on the road between Mt Lebanon and Sailes, just out of Gibsland, in Bienville Parish Louisiana, after being betrayed by Ivy Methvin, father of their current co-riding gang member Henry Methvin, who informed his local Sheriff, Henderson Jordan, of the place and time of his next secret meeting with Bonnie and Clyde, in exchange for a Texas pardon for Henry's crimes that had already been arranged by former Texas Ranger Captain, Frank Hamer, subject to the Methvins' assisting in the successful capture of Bonnie and Clyde. All of the above poems are presented here, some with commentary. Also presented is a poetic Eulogy to Bonnie. The story of Bonnie and Clyde is the story of a boy who had decided to live a life of crime, subsequently vowing to never be caught again following his first prison stint, which through thus inevitable consequent events led to him being destined for the electric chair if ever caught. Knowing this, he fought a desperate fight to live, a fight in which he outmatched officers of the law, who found themselves unable to apprehend him with the resources they had available, in the vast rural areas and small towns through which he drove and hid, stole and robbed, with some officers who confronted him, not realizing the abjectly desperate person they were confronting, unfortunately dying in Clyde's desperate battle against inevitable death. Into Clyde's world stepped Bonnie, a beautiful short slender 'doll like' girl, well educated, witty and fun, with raging hormones of youth, looking for adventure, abjectly depressed and sick of the relentless grind of the poverty of her life, she finally found her adventure with Clyde. Bonnie developed a love for Clyde (actually an increasing codependence that increasingly distracted her mind from her abject depression) and when Bonnie loved she loved! And for those she loved her loyalty knew no bounds, she would die for them. Together, Clyde and Bonnie outraged the public with their trail of mayhem, newspapers vying to publish any bit of news about them, knowing sales of their paper would spike. Their escapades, together with their epic published photographs that had been captured by officers of the law, along with their long time on the run and spectacular demise, all chronicled along the way by numerous newspaper writeups, made them legends in their own time. The gripping story of a girl whose love and loyalty for a boy was so great that she went to death with him, and of that boy who fought his world, always found a way to succeed and never gave up, makes them legends of all time. We would all love a Bonnie and we would all love a Clyde, just without the crime. Bonnie too, suppressed the crime in her mind and lived out her adventure, as if some sort of play, in the 'magic garden' of life. Bonnie's Epitaph as it appears on her grave: As The Flowers Are All Made Sweeter By The Sunshine And The Dew, So This Old World Is Made Brighter By The Lives Of Folks Like You.)

The Best Poem Of Bonnie Elizabeth Parker

The Prisoner (Bonnie's Imagined End After Clyde Is Killed)

BONNIE'S OWN POEM

01:
Dull the prison walls were gleaming
In the moonbeams golden glow
On that lonely July evening
Near a couple of years ago

02:
And behind the steel barred windows
Stood a prisoner just a girl
With her fearless blue eyes weeping
Haunting for the outside world

03:
All along the moonlit spaces
Stealthy shadows softly crept
Till at length exhausted prisoners
Closed their weary eyes and slept

04:
Came a hand laid on her shoulder
And her buddy ill at ease
Lest her friend be too despondent
So she then began to tease

05:
''Come my pal and sit beside me
Tell me what is on your mind
You have shared with me your pleasures
Now your sorrow should be mine''

06:
Said the sad one for an answer
Dear my time is almost done
Now I leave you on the 'morrow
By the setting of the sun

07:
Fair you are my little partner
What a pal you've always been
And upon my sad departure
You will take my ownings then

08:
Send my letters back to mother
They are tokens of her love
Tell her dear to please don't worry
I will wait for her above

09:
Tell her that I love her dearly
Make a promise now to me
That you'll go and live with mother
Make her happy when you're free

10:
Here's a picture of my darling
I shall trust unto your keep
He was killed when I was captured
Now he rests in peaceful sleep

11:
All those years I stayed beside him
For my love for him was true
And I was tried unjustly
For a crime I didn't do

12:
All this time I've been in prison
Days & nites have been so blue
Till I have begun to wonder
If the tales of God are true

13:
When the skies are grey above me
And the earth is cold & grim
And when all my tears and pleadings
Brings no answer down from him

14:
Dawned the next relentless morning
And the sun's unpitying eye
Looked upon the haggard prisoner
Looked to see her slowly die

15:
All day long the mournful whispers
Came from prisoners clad in grey
Mournful whispers for the deed
And whose pardon came that day

16:
Dull the prison walls are gleaming
In the moonbeams golden light
Shadows on another convict
At the cold steel bars tonight

17:
Many be the innocent victims
And their sorrows are not few
Who have sacrificed their freedom
For a crime they didn't do

END


Historical Note:

In this poem written near the end, in the spring of 1934, Bonnie Parker foretells her own end, after she ''goes down'' with Clyde Barrow and is captured after Clyde is killed. Previously she herself had ''gone down'' and been captured together with Ralph Fults while Clyde had managed to escape and she'd spent two months in Kaufman County jail for it. She also had the example of Blanche ''going down'' with Buck and being captured beside a mortally wounded Buck in 'Dexfield Park' Iowa. Bonnie often reminisced that had it been Clyde wounded and unable to escape instead of Buck, then she would have been the one to ''go down'' and be captured instead of Blanche. But in a short period of time when she lay hidden in brush with W.D. Jones, when they heard volleys of gunfire and thought Clyde had been killed, Bonnie had expressed her intention to suicide to W.D.. Just as W.D. was preparing to shoot Bonnie at her request, Clyde appeared. So it seems that had it been Clyde and Bonnie to 'go down' in 'Dexfield Park' instead of Buck and Blanche, certainly Clyde and perhaps also Bonnie would have suicided rather than allow themselves to be captured. This foretold Bonnie's suicidal mindset.

In the end however, the end Bonnie in her melancholy musing predicted for herself in this poem, was not to be. A few seconds after Clyde was suddenly and unexpectedly killed, hit in the head by the second of two rifle shots fired by Prentiss Oakley at very close range from his position concealed in the brush, Bonnie, screaming like a panther (in shock and horror at Clyde's sudden unresponsiveness and at the sudden momentarily unexpected finality of what was unfolding) , was injured by a volley of bullets while ducked down low to the car's floorboard with her head between her knees, as six Lawmen unloaded every gun they had, at a very slowly coasting car (Clyde had the car stationary in first gear and as his feet slipped off of the clutch and brake the car began moving forward but the motor stalled with no push of the gas pedal and coasted until it ran into the roadside drainage ditch and stopped against the earthen side of the ditch) . Bonnie then shaken and angry, decided in those critical last few seconds before imminent capture, to follow through and ''go down'' with Clyde, to die unvanquished fighting to her death in a final suicidal stand, Bonnie possumed the Lawmen and as she suddenly bobbed up attempting to fire a Colt.45 automatic at someone she noticed approaching her car door (Ted Hinton) , she was shot and killed by a volley of bullets fired into her through the windshield by observing Texas Ranger Captain Frank Hamer who had stationed himself in front of the windshield in anticipation of the possibility of being possumed.



01:
In this poem Bonnie looks back from the future, as if being her own story teller, back to the night in prison before her execution, the day of her execution and the nightfall again following her execution. The timespan of this poem is some 24 hours. Bonnie was expecting to be captured alive and acknowledging she may get the death penalty.

02:
Bonnie tells us in this poem that she was fearless, although she was weeping and wishing she was free.

03:
Bonnie imagines that the prisoners are all housed together in one big communal room, an open dorm, where they can move around and socialize with each other. This seems to have been the case for Clyde in the Huntsville penitentiary and Clyde would have told Bonnie about what prison was like for him and Bonnie will have assumed that it would be the same situation for her. While in the Kaufman County Jail, Bonnie had been housed in her own separate cell.

04:
Bonnie imagines that in prison she will find a buddy who will care for her and be there to comfort her in her moments of need.

05:
Bonnie's rationale is that if someone has shared their good times with you, then you are expected to share their bad times with them also. Bonnie's loyalty was based on this rationale. Clyde shared his good times with Bonnie and as a result Bonnie considered herself obligated to also share the bad times with Clyde as well, so she stayed with him till the last.

06:
Bonnie tells her prison pal that her time has come to an end and that she will be executed tomorrow before the sun sets. This is Bonnie's imagined prison situation. In reality Bonnie would have been held in isolation in the days before her execution with no contact with other prisoners.

07:
Bonnie is informing her prison pal that following her execution, her prison pal will take possession of Bonnie's property. This is Bonnie imagining the course of events. In reality Bonnie's property would have been collected by prison officials and either destroyed or turned over to Bonnie's next of kin.

08:
Bonnie so beautifully says how the letters from a mother are tokens of a mothers love and asks her prison pal to save them and return them to her mother. And to tell her mother to not worry, that she will be waiting for her in the afterworld.

09:
Bonnie asks her pal to tell Bonnie's mother that Bonnie loves her dearly. Then counsels her pal that one's mother is the greatest treasure one has and suggests she should go and live with her own mother and make her happy when she is free.

10:
In this poem Bonnie tells us that she expected to be captured when Clyde was killed (in reality capture would be difficult however because Bonnie's mindset was suicidal) . All she now has left of her darling Clyde is a picture and this picture is her most treasured possession and she values her pal so greatly that she will entrust her most treasured possession to her. Bonnie did carry a picture of herself with Clyde, on her person. One such picture was recovered by Lawmen from a pocket book that had slipped from Bonnie when Clyde and W.D. Jones were transferring her to another car, semiconscious or unconscious from loss of blood, at Broken Bow Nebraska, a few days after they had fled 'Dexfield Park' Iowa.

11:
She confirms that she stayed with Clyde through it all, because her love for him was true. She tells us that she considers herself ''tried unjustly'' by the law, where in her mind, her only real ''crime'' was her 'love for a man'. Bonnie wished for her love to be 'free' and 'above the law', while in reality she would be considered an accomplice in numerous felonies.

In Bonnie's time, women were not expected to live independently, and for most women it was impossible unless they were able to find some of the few women's jobs available, and then at poor pay, so that they were in perpetual poverty. So the society of that time trained women to give themselves up completely to their man, regardless of whether he was 'wrong or right', and to stay by his side 'for better or worse' till 'death do us part'.

Bonnie fulfilled those teachings 'to the letter'. She always 'followed' Clyde and 'deferred' to his lead in all things and was never the leader or instigator herself. Although she was a dogged and loyal follower and helper to Clyde in his 'life's journey', as she had been 'trained by society' that a woman to a man should be.

She considered that the Law by which she was being tried legally, as an 'accomplice', was not fair in consideration of the social teachings of women and women's enforced place in society. In this way she felt, in her mind, ''tried unjustly for a crime I didn't do''.

Bonnie is here also alluding to the Easter Sunday 1934 killings of two highway patrolmen at Grapevine, who she was falsely accused by an 'eyewitness' of having walked up to while they were lying injured on the ground and executing them 'point blank'. She felt this false accusation had sealed her fate in the electric chair.

12: and 13:
Bonnie tells us in this poem that she feels that God has abandoned her. Although she never abandoned God herself and when she was killed with Clyde in the ambush, she was wearing a cross and also a three acorn brooch representing the holy trinity.

14:
She also tells us that she expected to ''slowly die'' in the electric chair.

15:
There is no happiness on Bonnie's final day. The prisoners are both mournful for those who got the 'deed of execution' for their sad fate and also mournful for themselves staying behind as others got their pardons.

16:
And so that night Bonnie is no longer there, she's 'left the house' her traces 'washed away' to oblivion. Bonnie's place at the same cold steel bars is taken by some other prisoner, just as Bonnie had taken the place of some other prisoner before her.

17:
This is perhaps the last poem stanza that Bonnie ever wrote. It is very moving as Bonnie's otherwise neat handwriting suddenly breaks into a shaky scrawl at this last stanza, indicating that she has become emotionally overwhelmed when writing this stanza and is probably writing while sobbing heavily.

Towards the end, sensationalized newspaper writeups about Bonnie, especially those concerning the killing of the two motorcycle officers at Grapevine Dallas Texas on Easter Sunday 1934, which were based on false testimony by an 'eyewitness', that claimed Bonnie had walked up to the officers lying on the ground and executed them 'point blank', devastated Bonnie. She was very emotional about being accused of something she didn't do.

Bonnie would also have known about the long prison term Blanche got, which Bonnie would have felt most unfair, as Blanche had only been tagging behind her husband Buck Barrow and was otherwise, unlike Bonnie, not a participating gang member (although Blanche herself was a 'hard character' just like Bonnie and had been a willing accomplice to Buck's crimes previously, when alone with him) .

Bonnie felt she didn't stand a chance in court, with all the false accusations being published about her, and was distraught about being falsely accused.

It is unknown whether Bonnie knew that her sister Billie had been arrested at Gladewater Texas, five days before Bonnie was killed. Bonnie and Clyde were contacting with Billie (also apparently with Bonnie and Billie's brother Hubert) , as well as other accomplices at Gladewater Texas in the weeks and days leading up to their deaths and the Laws possibly arrested Billie preemptively to 'get her away' from Bonnie and Clyde as they finally 'tightened their net' on them. The Laws knew it was a 'false arrest' from the outset as they knew Billie was not involved with the killing of the Grapevine patrolmen. It is very possible that Bonnie was aware, which would explain why Bonnie and Clyde seemed nervous and distraught to Rosa, as they sat in her cafe in Gibsland, Bienville Parish, Louisiana, the day before they were killed.

It is thus quite possible that this poem was written by Bonnie sometime in April (after the Grapevine killings) and May 1934 and quite possibly in the seventeen day period in May between the time Bonnie and Clyde last saw their families (when Bonnie gave her mother a handwritten copy of her poem 'The Trail's End' on 6th May 1934) and their deaths, possibly even in the last five days after Billie was arrested.

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