As the Lizard King, Jim Morrison became more well-known for his serpentine behavior on and off-stage with The Doors, but what was often eclipsed, particularly towards the end of his brief life, was his mastery as a poet.
Born December 8, 1943, Morrison started writing as a child and was later drawn to French novelists, poets, and playwrights Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, Molière, and Honoré de Balzac and the Beat of Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac.
After graduating from UCLA in 1965 with a bachelor’s degree in film, when The Doors formed, Morrison was swallowed up more by writing than filmmaking and self-published two volumes of poetry, The Lords / Notes on Vision and The New Creatures, in 1969.
Even the Doors’ name was inspired by William Blake’s 1790 poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
Using his own model of Burroughs’ “cut-up” method of writing, Morrison often pulled lyrics from his stacks of notebooks full of phrases, quotes, and pieces of his poetry, to write songs for The Doors.
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Morrison also recorded his poems in the studio in 1969 and 1970, and several posthumous books of his previously unreleased poetry have also been released throughout the decades, including Wilderness: The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 1, published in 1988.
Wilderness featured one of Morrison’s more palpable poems, Power:
I can make the earth stop in its tracks
I made the blue cars go away
I can make myself invisible or small
I can become gigantic and reach the farthest things
I can change the course of nature
I can place myself anywhere in space or time
I can summon the dead
I can perceive events in other worlds, in my deepest inner mind, and in the minds of others
I can
I am
Before his death on July 27, 1971, at age 27, Morrison released the 50-minute film HWY: An American Pastoral, which followed a recurring theme in his prose of a murderous hitchhiker. He also planned to release a 600-page book of his writings and other creative works, which were later compiled in the 2021 book The Collected Works of Jim Morrison: Poetry, Journals, Transcripts, and Lyrics.
[RELATED: American Songwriter Interview with The Doors’ Robby Krieger – Writing on the Storm]
Though many of Morrison’s poems remained in their natural form, in 1978, the surviving members of The Doors, guitarist Robby Krieger, keyboardist Ray Manzarek (1939-2013), and drummer John Densmore, set music to his recorded readings of some poems for band’s ninth and final album An American Prayer.
“We did this album to show the side of Jim which has been underrated all these years,” said Manzarek in 1978. An American Prayer was nominated for a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album. “As far as we were concerned, Jim was a poet,” added Manzarek. “But being the Lizard King has overshadowed the fact that he did some incredible poetry.”
Long after his death, Morrison’s words remain immortal. Here’s a look at just five of Morrison’s poems that eventually transitioned into Doors songs seven years after his death.
1. ‘Ghost Song’
Like many of Morrison’s poems, the meaning of Ghost Song remains a mystery since he rarely shared any interpretations of his works. Nevertheless, Ghost Song reveals some elements of a loss of innocence and the passing of time within the verses.
Awake
Shake dreams from your hair my pretty child, my sweet one
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The days divinity
First thing you see
A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by its quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us
Choose they croon the ancient ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dance
2. ‘An American Prayer’
Do you know we are ruled by T.V.? Morrison was on to something. Ahead of its time, An American Prayer was already calling out the detriments of technology. The poem also questions political rule and the obscenities and bloodshed of war.
Do you know the warm progress under the stars?
Do you know we exist?
Have you forgotten the keys to the kingdom?
Have you been born yet, and are you alive?
Let’s reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages
Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
Have you forgotten the lessons of the ancient war?
We need great golden copulations
The fathers are cackling in trees of the forest
Our mother is dead in the sea
Do you know we are being lead to slaughter by placid admirals
And that fat slow generals are getting obscene on young blood?
Do you know we are ruled by T.V.?
The moon is a dry blood beast
Guerrilla bands are rolling numbers
In the next block of green vine
Amassing for warfare on innocent herdsman who are just dying
O’ great creator of being, grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives
3. ‘The Hitchhiker’
Riders on the storm / Into this world we’re born / Into this world we’re thrown. Morrison’s The Hitchhiker was poeticly strewn to The Doors’ L.A. Woman classic “Riders on the Storm” on An American Prayer.
Portions of the chorus of “Riders on the Storm” are interspersed in Morrison’s poem as he reads through his recount of a hitchhiker, himself, who confesses to wasting someone in the desert.
Thoughts in time and out of season
The Hitchhiker
Stood by the side of the road
And leveled his thumb
In the calm calculus of reason
Hi. How you doin’? I just got back into town L.A.
I was out on the desert for awhile
“Riders on the storm”
Yeah. In the middle of it
“Riders on the storm”
Right…
“Into this world we’re born”
Hey, listen, man, I really got a problem
“Into this world we’re thrown”
When I was out on the desert, ya know
“Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan”
I don’t know how to tell you
“Riders on the storm”
But, ah, I killed somebody
“There’s a killer on the road”
No…
“His brain is squirming like a toad”
It’s no big deal, ya know
I don’t think anybody will find out about it, but…
” Take a long holiday”
Just, ah…
“Let your children play”
This guy gave me a ride, and ah…
“If you give this man a ride”
Started giving me a lot of trouble
“Sweet family will die”
And I just couldn’t take it, ya know
“Killer on the road”
And I wasted him
Yeah
[RELATED: Remember When: Jim Morrison’s 1969 Arrest for Indecency]
4. ‘Curses, Invocations’
Filled with more perverse stanzas, Curse, Invocations also ends on some of the eloquently placed lines by Morrison: Words dissemble / Words be quick / Words resemble walking sticks / Plant them they will grow / Watch them waver so.
Curses, invocations
Weird bate-headed mongrels
I keep expecting one of you to rise
Large buxom obese queens
Garden hogs and cunt veterans
Quaint cabbage saints
Shit hoarders and individualists
Drag strip officials
Tight lipped losers and
Lustful fuck salesmen
My militant dandies
All strange order of monsters
Hot on the trail of the woodvine
We welcome you to our procession
Here come the comedians
Look at them smile
Watch them dance an Indian mile
Look at them gesture
How aplomb
So to gesture everyone
Words dissemble
Words be quick
Words resemble walking sticks
Plant them they will grow
Watch them waver so
5. ‘Lament’
On its surface, Lament reads like a more carnal account. Morrison is talking about the death of his penis, but it may have been a more metaphorical look at his struggles and burning desires.
As Morrison reads Lament on the An American Prayer album, Krieger’s guitar slips after the words Taught us god in the child’s prayer in the night.
Lament for my cock Sore and crucified I seek to know you
Acquiring soulful wisdom
You can open walls of mystery, Stripshow
How to acquire death in the morning show, TV death which the child absorbs
Deathwell mystery which makes me write
Slow train, the death of my cock gives life
Forgive the poor old people who gave us entry
Taught us god in the child’s prayer in the night
Guitar player Ancient wise satyr
Sing your ode to my cock
Caress it’s lament stiffen and guide us, we frozen
Lost cells The knowledge of cancer
To speak to the heart And give the great gift words power trance
This stable friend and the beast of his zoo
Wild-haired chicks Women flowering in their summit, monsters of skin
Each color connects to create the boat which rocks the race
Could any hell be more horrible than now and real?
I pressed her thigh and death smiled
Death, old friend Death and my cock are the world
I can forgive my injuries in the name of wisdom luxury romance
Sentence upon sentence words are the healing lament For the death of my cock’s spirit Has no meaning in the soft fire
Words got me the wound and will get me well I you believe it
All join now and lament the death of my cock a tongue of knowledge in the feathered night
Boys get crazy in the head and suffer I sacrifice my cock on the altar of silence
Photos: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
