Angels and sailors,

rich girls, backyard fences, tents,
Dreams watching each other narrowly,
soft luxuriant cars,
Girls in garages,
stripped out to get liquor and clothes,
half gallons of wine and six‑packs of beer,
Jumped, humped, born to suffer,
made to undress in the wilderness.

I will never treat you mean,
Never start no kind of scene,
I'll tell you every place and person that I've been.
Always a playground instructor, never a killer,
Always a bridesmaid on the verge of fame or over.
He maneuvered two girls into his hotel room -
One a friend, the other, the young one, a newer stranger,
Vaguely Mexican or Puerto Rican
Poor boys' thighs and buttock scarred by a father's belt.
She's trying to rise,
Story of her boyfriend,
of teenage stoned death games
Handsome lad, dead in a car.
Confusion
No connections
Come here
I love you
Peace on earth
Will you die for me?
Eat me
This way
The end
I'll always be true
Never go out, sneaking out on you, babe
If you'll only show me Far Arden again.
I'm surprised you could get it up
He whips her lightly, sardonically, with belt.
Haven't I been through enough? - she asks
Now dressed and leaving
The Spanish girl begins to bleed
She says her period
It's Catholic heaven
I have an ancient Indian crucifix around my neck
My chest is hard and brown
Lying on stained, wretched sheets
with a bleeding virgin
We could plan a murder
Or start a religion.

Jim Morrison
"Angels and Sailors"
1969
From "An American Prayer"
1978

Indian, Indian, what did you die for?

Indian says, nothing at all.

Gently they stir, gently rise.
The dead are newborn awakening
With ravaged limbs and wet souls,
Gently they sigh in rapt funeral amazement.
Who called these dead to dance?
Was it the young woman learning to play the ghost song on her baby grand?
Was it the wilderness children?
Was it the ghost god himself, stuttering, cheering, chatting blindly?
I called you up to anoint the earth.
I called you to announce sadness falling like burned skin.
I called to wish you well,
To glory in self like a new monster.
And now I call on you to pray.

James Douglas Morrison
"Ghost Song"
from "American Prayer"
1978

Shake dreams from your hair

My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day's 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 woolly cotton brains on infancy.
<...>

Did you know freedom exists in a school book
Did you know madmen are running our prison
within a jail, within a gaol,
within a white free protestant maelstrom

We're perched headlong on the edge of boredom
We're reaching for death on the end of a candle
We're trying for something that's already found us

Wow, I'm sick of doubt
Live in the light of certain South
Cruel bindings
The servants have the power
dog-men & their mean women
pulling poor blankets over our sailors
I'm sick of dour
faces, staring at me from the T.V. tower:
I want roses in my garden bower;
dig?
Royal babies, rubies
must now replace aborted strangers in the mud.
These mutants, blood-meal
from the plant that's plowed
They are waiting to take us into
the severed garden

So you know how pale & wanton thrillful
comes death on a strange hour
unannounced, unplanned for
like a scaring over-friendly guest you've
brought to bed

Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings,
where we had shoulders,
smooth as raven's claws...

No more money, no more fancy dress
This other Kingdom seems by far the best
until its other jaw reveals incest
& loose obedience to a vegetable law

I will not go -
Prefer a Feast of Friends
To the Giant Family

Jim Morrison
from "The American Prayer"
1978