The lyric to this song is an excerpt from The Celebration Of The Lizard, a Jim Morrison poem that was going to take up the first side of Waiting For The Sun. "Not To Touch The Earth" was the only part of the 24-minute song that was compelling enough to put on the album, but the entire 133-line poem was included on the album sleeve. (A complete performance of the poem can be heard on the 1970 album Absolutely Live.)
Morrison cribbed the title, and also the line "Not to see the sun," from Aftermath: A Supplement to the Golden Bough, a supplement to the 1890 book The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. Both works were written by the Scottish social anthropologist Sir James George Frazer. Morrison got the lines from the table of contents: Chapter LXV — Not to Touch the Earth Chapter LXVI — Not to See the Sun
The lyrics, "Dead presidents corpse in the driver's car" refers to the assassination of US president John F. Kennedy.
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