ONH Consulting Teaching Growing Changing

In Memory of Karen Carpenter

Jun 22, 2006 at 05:10 pm by Christopher


As I travel down these back country roads of life,
Your music brings me to the top of the world.
Your simple but exquisite harmonies, your aura are my great guiding light,
Bringing me, closer, closer to you.

Your melodies cross all ages and times.
All phases of life's journey.
From your incitements to "Sing, sing a song"
And your pleas to the Christmas altar boy,
To make your spirit holy and pure,
Like him with his simple, untarnished prayers,
To lonely roads that pass through towns
Where Solitaire's the only game
And no one blesses beast or child
And the need for love wakes me at 4 A.M.
Like the prison warden's call to labor
For the crimes of just being human.

You were perfect in every way,
Though your quest for perfection sparked a fire
That no one could see nor recognize.
It burned white hot within you,
Robbing you of your life day by day.
By forcing you not to eat or drink
Or take any sustenance.

Like the fire set by angry and lustful human hands
That burns under the landscape unseen.
And promises false green vitality for the grass and the trees in winter
While nature demands that the fields and forests slumber,
Until she can bring the life and splendor of the spring,
A demon with the sterile name of Anorexia Nervosa
Was sapping you of your inner beauty
In the name of empty promises of perfection
In every aspect of your outward appearance.
By the time you recognized the fire and tried to quench it,
It was too late.

It was a rainy Monday morning
In the lonely town of Lancaster,
The kind that always got me down.
When the fires of false perfection claimed you
And took your beauty from this world forever.
But your angelic wisdom lives on in your music
Which I listen to on this lonely road
To a destination now unknown.

You were a superstar, a legend,
An ambassador from the angels.