"Horse Latitudes" is the fifth song from The Doors

The Doors

The Doors were an American rock band formed in 1965 in Los Angeles, California, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore, and guitarist Robby Krieger...

 second album, Strange Days

Strange Days (album)

Strange Days is the second album released by American rock band The Doors. The album was a commercial success, earning a gold record and reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Despite this, the album's producer, Paul Rothchild, considered it a commercial failure, even if it was an...

. The song is a spoken word piece by Jim Morrison

Jim Morrison

James Douglas "Jim" Morrison was an American musician, singer, and poet, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the rock band The Doors...

 with the band providing frightening noises as a backdrop. Morrison screams the lyrics, telling of a ship at sea forced to jettison the onboard horses to lighten their load. The words are taken from one of the first poems Jim Morrison ever wrote, inspired by a book cover he saw at a local bookstore as a child.

Keyboardist Ray Manzarek

Ray Manzarek

Raymond Daniel Manzarek, Jr., better known as Ray Manzarek , is an American musician, singer, producer, film director, writer, co-founder and keyboardist of The Doors from 1965 to 1973, Nite City from 1977–1978 and Manzarek-Krieger since 2001.Manzarek is listed #4 on Digital Dreamdoor's "100...

 mentions in his book Light My Fire he never believed Morrison wrote "Horse Latitudes" at such a young age, claiming the words were "too mature".

This song often segued into Moonlight Drive

Moonlight Drive

"Moonlight Drive" was one of the seminal tracks on The Doors' second album, Strange Days. Although it was only a B-side , it is a favorite in The Doors canon...

, or vice versa, which follows it on the album.