Cragmont Climbing Club

THE ISOPLEX

by Sean Ward

(Poetry in the CCC newsletter, The Crag)

End of March 1997 a group of us gathered in Tucson for Spring climbing at Mt. Lemmon with it's strange and wonderful clods of climbable matter that the locals call heffalumps, schlamoinkas and gelumpkees. These garish and gargoyled outcrops contrast radically with the confusing wasteland of look-a-like strip malls and ceee-ment saguaros of Tuck-sun. We descended nightly into this iso-city where the standard unit of measure is the cinderblock. We'd drink coffee and tell the youth, "RUN AWAY!" and think, maybe Las Vegas is not that bad after all.

THE ISOPLEX

Speedway boooolevard - screamin' on ferever

cinderblock city in the sun

strip mall

sTriP mAll

STRIP MALL !!!

ain't no place t' run

45 minutes from ever'where

a million miles t' none

 

I wanna be a cinderblock cowboy

an' make me a ton o' mon'

gonna make me a lot o' ceee-ment

an' have me a bunch o' fun

 

THE ISOPLEX tells me what t' think

an' how t' spend my days

THE ISOPLEX tells me what I want

in lots o' money ways

 

THE ISOPLEX leads me t' dusty drink

at the font of desert haze

THE ISOPLEX shows me how to feel

in isoplexian ways

 

I wanna be a cinderblock cowboy

makin' cinderblock towers to the sun

gonna sell a ton o' ceee-ment

for dem strip malls, oh-way-sees o' fun

 

now I done me that cinderblock cowboy thang

an' I made me lots o' dough

sellin' cinderblocks down on Speedway

sho' got me lots o' thangs to show

 

now funny 'nuff, ain't all that happy

buildin' ceee-ment cities in the sun

my kids hangin' out at strip malls

with their Coke's an' faces on stun

 

Oh cinderblock SU-AR-O, point me the way

wanna 'scape to the heffalump fun

On up ol' Mt. Lemmon highway

On up a gelumpkee I'll run

 

HEY! Doan wanna be no cinderblock cowboy.

Wanna clip me some bolts in the sun

Lookee me! I'ma cindefella cowboy

Dancin' up these lumps o' fun

 

Atop o' Hitchcock's pinnacle

Finally foun' my place in the sun

Lookin' down on that sinderblack wasteland

Why'd it took me so long t' run?

 

Doan know what I was thinkin'

down in that eYe soRE pLeX

makin' money sellin' ceee-ment

s' jes isoplexic sex

 

Speedway boooolevard - screamin' on ferever

sinderblock city in the sun

isoplex

I so plex

I SO PLEX

ain't no place to run

45 minutes from ever'where

a million miles t' none

 

ISOPLEX

iSoPLeX

isoplex

I so plex

I so

I

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