The All-Star Track Runner's Song @martinjameskelly

Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

"The All-Star Track Runner's Song"

I’m a track star on vacation
And a lucrative thing I do
Is head to the tourist section
And offer to take a photo for you

Then I take your camera
And run away with it
And if I do that ten times
That pays for my trip

Nobody can catch me
I’m an all-star track runner
I don’t waste my skills
On breaks during the summer

I’m very good at running through
The streets of foreign towns
With stolen cameras and so far
No one has taken me down

If you’ve got a cheap camera
That’s not worth my time
Pretty much you’re safe
From being a victim of mine

Pretty much the same thing
If you’re using your phone
They’ve got trackers in them
So that’s a no-go

Nobody can catch me
I’m an all-star track runner
I don’t waste my skills
On breaks during the summer

I’m very good at running through
The streets of foreign towns
With stolen cameras and so far
No one has taken me down

I like to look through the photos
That are stored on the device
Images of happy people
Whose vacations were going nice

I hope they backed those photos up
And sent them to the cloud
I’m just gonna delete them all
That doesn’t make me proud

When I get back home there’s a pawn broker
Who wonders where I get so many cameras
And how I go on so many trips
From Paris to the Bahamas

I tell her politely
That’s none of her concern
And as long as I keep bringing them in
Both of us will earn

Nobody can catch me
I’m an all-star track runner
I don’t waste my skills
On breaks during the summer

I’m very good at running through
The streets of foreign towns
With stolen cameras and so far
No one has taken me down

So if you ask someone to take your photo
When you’re on holiday
Make sure you can run faster than them
Is all I have to say

Barring that, back your memory card up
Is my other tip
If you want photographic memories
Of places you visited on your trip

Nobody can catch me
I’m an all-star track runner
I don’t waste my skills
On breaks during the summer

I’m very good at running through
The streets of foreign towns
With stolen cameras and so far
No one has taken me down

I like the Bassoon Over Every Other Instrument

Christmas Dinner by Vance Gilbert (Cover Version)

The Song is the Thing by Phil Hogg (Cover Version)

$Songwriting Songwriting class begins the same An envelope with my name A check I slide across the desk Beside a song I’ve second-guessed We read the lines out loud and slow She asks me what I meant to show We sit with words that don’t feel right And try to turn them toward the light Sometimes I wonder as we start If something shifts inside the art If it begins with a transaction Does it lose a little fraction Of the quiet, sacred spark That first flickered in the dark? Can my song still be meaningful If it’s part of something paid for? Or is it simply what we do To help a fragile thing come through? They say a song should stand alone That truth is best when grown at home But singers train and runners fall And no one learns without a call Even healers seek a guide When doubt is heavy at their side So why should music be the one That must be born from only one? Still it lingers in my chest That small uneasiness at rest If it begins with a transaction Does it dull the first reaction? Or is payment just a frame For tending carefully a flame? Is the spark diminished there Or simply handled with more care? Maybe money isn’t sin Just the door we’re entering Some say the truest songs are free Wolves howling endlessly Or orcas calling through the sea Wind chimes stirred by mystery But wolves don’t wonder if they’re heard And whales don’t weigh a single word They sing because they have to sing Not asking what the cost might bring If it begins with a transaction Maybe that’s just human action We trade our hours, trade our skill To help each other climb a hill Maybe art is still as true When someone walks the path with you And maybe grace is not undone By how the work is finally done So I slide the envelope once more Pull out my rough draft as before And somewhere in the give and take A better song begins to wake$