Hero

Words and Music - Robert R. Martin
SOCAN 2008

I heard you went down Sunday morning in a cocaine bust
So now my friend you’re just another martyr in the dust
Sold out by some junkie who was too strung out to steal,
and prison bars leave deeper scars than time can hope to heal

I left you in the airport on my way to Montreal
looking for a restless love I’d lost in Bogata,
and as I walked away I turned, and saw you standing there alone
looking like some frightened schoolgirl who’d forgotten her way home

So now I hope you know the reason that I had to go my way
‘cause if I’d stayed, you’d still be hanging on to me today
and there was so much wide-eyed innocence in what you thought of me
but I was never quite the hero that you made me out to be.

Tried to end it clean, but you were haunted by the scar
bloglines strewn like landmines on the road to Kandahar
and though some times I might feel sorry, I’m too calcified to care
‘cause when love ends, a fool pretends it really wasn’t there.

So you can try and fail to understand, or struggle to explain
perhaps you should compare what you have lost with what you’ve gained?
as you sit alone in silence with your harsh reality
and the memory of the hero that you made me out to be.

So now the spell is broken, and there’s no more mystery.
Times like this I wonder what you’ve come to think of me.
‘Cause you were such a dreamer then, and I was such a fool
and fools are seldom heroes in the end
no matter what they might pretend.

Robert R. Martin – acoustic and electric guitars, vocals, keyboard
Glen Drewry – bass
Lee Hager – drums, congas, tablas, djembe, triangle, udu
Bryn Baddell – trumpet, flugelhorn