Jim Morrison- Poems and Quotes

"We must tie all these desperate impressions together."

THE CROSSROADS

Meeting you at your parent’s gate

We will tell you what to do

What you have to do

to survive

Leave the rotten towns

of your father

Leave the poisoned wells

& bloodstained streets

Enter now the sweet forest

"I offer images.  I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached, like The Doors, right?  But we can only open the doors; we can't drag people through.  I can't free them unless they want to be free.  Maybe primitive people have less bullshit to let go of, to give up.  A person has to be willing to give up everything, not just wealth.  All the bullshit that he's been taught--all society's brainwashing.  You have to let go of all that to get to the other side.  Most people aren't willing to do that."

"We're like actors, turned loose in this world to wander in search of a phantom, endlessly searching for a half-formed shadow of our lost reality.  When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are.  It's a subtle kind of murder.  The most loving parents and relatives commit this murder with smiles on their faces."

"I think there's a whole region of images and feelings inside us that rarely are given outlet in daily life.  And when they do come out, they can take perverse forms.  It's the dark side.  Everyone, when he sees it, recognizes the same thing in himself.  It's the recognition of forces that rarely see the light of day.  The more civilized we get on the surface, the more the other forces make their plea."

"Philosophy doesn't interest me as much as it used to. I think the day I finally was forced to realize that no one in the world really knows any more about what's going on than any other person, I kind of lost interest in philosophy as a study of ideas, but appreciate it from the standpoint of how men in the past have used words, have used language. That's why for me poetry is the ultimate art form, because what defines us as human beings is language. The way we talk is the way we think, and the way we think is the way we act, and the way we act is what we are. And so I appreciate philosophy these days from the standpoint of poetry, the use of one word next to another word next to another word. So, philosophy is semantics, I guess."
                       -Jim Morrison 1970

"The best songs come unasked for. You don't have to think about them. Summer is good for songs. When it's real warm, if you have a sense of freedom, not a lot on your mind, and a feeling there's plenty of time.  It just seems to be a good climate for music."

We are not constant

We are an arrow in flight

The sum of the angles of change

             -Notebook Poems

This is the end, beautiful friend.

This is the end, my only  friend,

the end,

    of our elaborate plans,

the end,

    of everything that stands,

the end,

     no safety or surprise,

the end.

I’ll never look into your eye again.

Can you picture what will be,

so limitless and free

desperately in need

of some stranger’s hand,

in a desperate land.