The Court of Miracles

1929, Wall Street crashes. Real estate agents, shareholders, bankers, they all go bankrupt. Factories close the doors. Suddenly the United States of America have thirteen million unemployed. Some of them believe the laws that govern the world are hostile to them. Maybe they are better of as outlaws.

Clyde Barrow is one of them. Anger is raging deep inside him. As a king of his own empire, he will declare war on the world beyond.

January, 1930. Clyde and his big brother Buck are arrested on charges of car theft and armed robbery. Buck is sentenced to four, Clyde to two years in prison.

Bonnie writes long letters to Clyde. Bonnie attempts to visit him. Bonnie goes mad of loneliness and desire for her lover. She tries to kill time without him by reading books and writing songs and poems.

She makes notes some in a historical novel about the infamous Court of Miracles, the Paris district where in the sixteenth and seventeenth century all the crookes of the French capital were looking for a refuge. The district got its name from the beggars who calculated on the compassion of the brave citizens: if you were lame or blind, you could make more money. But within the walls of this ‘world in the world', all those lame men and women were suddenly walking again, and all the blind could see.

Be welcome, mister, and sit down

in the Court of Miracles,

where the lame are walking and the blind can see

and nothing is what it seems.

Where chopped off chicken heads keep on cackling,

you can dance with me a fine duel

before we are all going

to hell.

Law is crooked, so come on, get

hooked, the wine is red

as your blood and we are all drinking to life

or death.

So please, mister, come and play

with the Queen of Spades, she'll plant a dagger

between your shoulder blades and we'll divide

all of your money honestly,

so please come and play with me!

(BP, February 1930)

My Dearest,

Nothing is worthwhile.

Nothing is worth it, except this: that I love you and that I love you more than my own life, sweetheart.

I'm getting crazy. Last night I dreamed that you escaped from the prison and that I was imprisoned. I wished that I could sever these long days in your place, sweetheart.

I'm so sad.

Sometimes I think that your imprisonment is worse for me than it is for you. Because without you by my side, I'm also imprisoned, my darling.

Without you the world is empty, because you are my whole world.

Without you I'm dead, sweetheart. Because you are my life.

Your Bonnie

BONNIE & CLYDE

She overwhelmed and was overwhelmed

as a mistress by her dearest

big bully along a dark and lonesome

desert road.

And when his head was between her breasts

as on the national treasure chest,

they both wanted to laugh

and cry at once.

And they loved and she cried and he identified

himself as the serf

of Bonnie Parker, forever

her vassal and pleased to meet her,

Clyde Barrow.

(BP, March 1930)

Once upon a time

she was the Queen of the Forbidden City

and he was her explorer:

He wandered along the Silk Roads

of her thighs to the High North

and through the hills and valleys

of her breasts and belly

to the Deep South.

But now the gates are closed

and he can't find the words

of the three whishes

that would throw open all the doors

like she long ago openened

all her limbs for her lover

when she allowed him to admire

all her wonders - palaces

and cathedrals and secret gardens

to get lost.

She gave him te key to her treasury,

but see him now standing there

on the treshold, paralysed

as a statue, stoned

in the middle of the market.