The Street Girl
(cont.)
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 hop,
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.
Yeah the actually Bonnie of the actual Bonnie and Clyde was a poet. Who knew?
The assignment was Poetry Art. I found the poem here, and then the image I used was this:
I chose the image because in my version of the Bonnie and Clyde story, they’ll be stirring up trouble on the east coast and then planning on driving out west and hiding somewhere in California, and I figure they’d drive through a lot of desert to get there. The photo editor I used is called pixlr and it’s an app you can find in the chrome webstore if you use google chrome as your browser. I only used that because my good computer with photoshop had run out of battery and I was feeling really motivated and didn’t want to wait for it to charge.
So the first thing I did was take my little magic wand to the sky to select it, and then I deleted it because I wanted to choose my own shade of blue for the sky. Then I took the main image layer and edited the curves, made it less saturated and warmed up the color.
Then I just used the gradient tool to do the sky, and I picked out a font and placement for the bit of the poem I was using. And then it was all done!