The Story of Bonnie and Clyde (The End of the Line)
The Story of Bonnie and Clyde (The End of the Line) Lyrics
Of how he lived and died;
If you're still in need
Of something to read
Here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde.
Now Bonnie and Clyde are the Barrow gang.
I'm sure you all have read
how they rob and steal,
And those who squeal
Are usually found dying or dead.
There's lots of untruths to these write-ups;
They're not as ruthless as that;
Their nature is raw;
They hate all the law--
The stool pigeons, spotters, and rats.
They call them cold-blooded killers;
They say they are heartless and mean;
But I say this with pride,
That I once knew Clyde
When he was honest and upright and clean.
But the laws fooled around,
Kept taking him down
And locking him up in a cell,
Till he said to me,
"I'll never be free,
So I'll meet a few of them in hell."
there were no highway signs to guide;
But they made up their minds
If all roads were blind,
They wouldn't give up 'til they died.
The road gets dimmer and dimmer;
Sometimes you can hardly see;
But it's fight man to man,
And do all you can,
For they know they can never be free.
From heart-break some people have suffered;
From weariness some people have died;
But take all in all,
Our troubles are small
Till we get like Bonnie and Clyde.
If a policeman is killed in Dallas,
And they have no clue or guide;
If they can’t find a fiend,
They just wipe their slate clean
And hang it on Bonnie and Clyde.
There’s two crimes committed in America
Not accredited to the Barrow mob;
They had no hand
In the kidnap demand
Nor the Kansas City Depot job.
"I wish old Clyde would get jumped;
In these hard times
We’d make a few dimes
If five or six cops would get bumped."
The police haven't got the report yet
But Clyde called me up today;
He said,"Don't start any fights--
We aren't working nights--
We're joining the NRA."
From Irving to West Dallas viaduct
Is known as the Great Divide,
Where the women are kin
And the men are men,
And they won’t "stool" on Bonnie and Clyde.
If they try to act like citizens
And rent them a nice little flat,
About the third night
They're invited to fight
By a sub-gun's rat-tat-tat.
They don’t think they’re too smart or desperate
They know the law always wins;
They’ve been shot at before,
But they do not ignore
That death is the wages of sin.
And they’ll bury them side by side
To few it’ll be grief--
To the law a relief--
But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.
About
Bonnie Parker fancied herself something of a writer. Her interest in poetry stemmed from a young age and in 1932, while incarcerated for a botched burglary, she penned a chapbook entitled, Poetry from the Other Side. The ten handwritten poems brought even more sensationalized attention from the media, which was already crazy for the infamous duo.
“The End of the Line”–published as “The Story of Bonnie and Clyde” by the press–is Parker’s take on the unjust nature of the law and society in general, especially in times as harsh as the Great Depression. In the sixteen-stanza poem, she denies accusations of crimes “they had no hand in,” then accurately predicts her own demise.
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