JIM’S POETRY is often narrative and auto biographical. Ron Alan talks about the “Graveyard Poem” in this excerpt from the book “Jim Morrison: Friends Gathered Together”.
What’s the background of the “Graveyard Poem”?
Ron: That took place actually a night that we played a club called the Sea Witch which was on the Sunset Strip …and then after that gig we went over to a couple girls’ house that we knew—Pam and Peggy. So we went over to their place and were pretty drunk and we all took some acid and we saw the graveyard across the street; right there on Gower. Right on Gower, just south of Santa Monica Boulevard, there’s that very large graveyard.
Anyway, it was like, what, two or three in the morning and we were looking at that graveyard and we figured, that’d be a real good place to go right now. So me and Freddy and Jim, and these two girls—Pam and Peggy—climbed the walls there and went into the graveyard. The minute we got into the graveyard, we saw a white rabbit and we chased the white rabbit and he got away. And we just stayed in there and walked around and it was like almost defying death in a way, to embrace it. There is death, why hide from it.
We scaled the wall
We tripped thru the graveyard
Ancient shapes were all around us
No music but the wet grass
felt fresh beside the fog
from the “Graveyard Poem” by Jim Morrison
Michael at the grave of James Douglas Morrison in 2007.