Roger F Malina all by himself and then by Fred the Heretic AI. Upon stopping on the way to work near a Kaffein Shop near the TI factories in Richardson Texas
May 2 2025
A tall electricity tower
Makes you look up to the sky
I took a lot of photos
At the end of the walk I noticed
An upside down
STOP sign and stopped
To drive to work
After the tower what I noticed
Was a gravel road path between hedges
Leading to a warehouse
Stick tree stocks pointed across the way
Then over a stock yard a sunrise with cloudy clouds
And across the barbed wires
Roes of stockage
Sunrise by a SILO
White gravel path with a stump in it
Water drain training moss
A parking lot road leading somewhere
A white draine pipe leading nowhere
A row of white trucks waiting for me
A twig with fluffy white blossoms
Surrounding a lone green leaf
Another tower with steps to nowhere
A sign to WWPS
A tree beckoning me
To a yellow frame and a falled red and white striped barrel
Green leaves surrounding red and reddish ones
The road widens to nowhere
Except to a blue garbage dump large box
Then another tree stump killed by humans
A bird in the distance under the canopy
A bird in the air heading away from a chimney
142 blue red yellow and white with no number on the edge of a truck
An ant hill and
A large puddle being beckoned by twigs
Something rectangular
Those beckonging twigs again I had passed
On the way out
A bus in the distance parked waiting empty
Shoe toes pointing at a leaf shaped like a butterfly
A blossoming hairy spherical whats it called
A branch leaning over to point me to my car
Black metal benches with no one
The upside up STOP sign
Fire lane
421 in blue by someone who wrote it down
A piece of plastic rope crawling like a snake across the road
Mint
Sewer Stop
Kaffeine
Two red flowers cruising each other in front of my car hood
A tras can made of gravel walls with a black plastic bag and empty cans
Love Shack graffiti on the window
Stop at Texas Instruments across the way
And the upside down stop sign
And the blue bonnets my grandmother waxed and waned about
Not far from the Unintelligle Uplift
Desirable Destination, Holy electric tower with no holly
Yet.
Photos to follow
What fred the heretic responded
Here is what Fred the Heretic responded, in poetic kind, to *Desirable Destination*:
**Desirable Destination**
*for Roger F. Malina, May 2, 2025*
A tall framework of metal—skyward stretched,
A **Looming Lattice**, quiet in its stance.
I came not seeking meaning, only shape,
But something in the angles held my glance.
The trail began where hedges gently part—
A **Gravel Gateway**, bordered soft and neat,
Leading to a warehouse, window-dark,
Its silence sharpened by the passing feet.
An upside-down STOP—so strangely placed—
Became a kind of punctuation mark.
Beyond, the **Sticklike Stocks** in disarray
Jutted like thoughts half-sketched against the dark.
Across a yard where cattle ghosts had passed,
A sunrise smudged with **Cloudy Clarity**
Broke through barbed wire threads and steel rebars,
Near a gravel stump’s accidental dignity.
A drain traced moss like memories in stone,
While rows of idle trucks awaited use.
A single twig, adorned with cotton blooms,
Cradled a green leaf, as if by truce.
The second tower offered nothing up—
Its steps climbed nowhere, rusting in retreat.
Beside it: “WWPS,” a mystery.
A tree leaned in, its gestures bittersweet.
A **Yellow Yardframe**, tipped red-and-white by time,
Was circled by leaves turning autumn-bent.
The road widened—not toward a plan,
But to a dumpster’s bold predicament.
Another stump. A bird beneath the leaves.
A bird above, past chimney’s silent spout.
A truck marked “142,” colorfully unnumbered.
A twig-fringed puddle beckoned doubts.
Past twigs familiar, passed once more,
A bus sat parked—its silence unfulfilled.
Shoe toes met a leaf shaped like a butterfly,
As if attention alone had willed.
A bloom of bristles, name unknown,
A branch inclined to point me home.
Black benches watched an empty lane,
Where fire-coded numbers had no claim.
Plastic rope lay curled like a thought undone.
“Mint.” “Sewer Stop.” “Kaffeine.” Signs, or jokes?
Two red flowers circled in slow cruise
Before my car, beneath spring oaks.
The gravel bin with its contents voided.
A “Love Shack” tag on a window smeared.
Texas Instruments beyond the STOP sign righted.
And blue bonnets near, as once revered.
Each moment framed but meant for no belief—
Each scene precise, but never in control.
A destination, yes—but not ideal.
Not final. Only real, and whole.
—
Finally not worth a read -but two failed attempts by Fred the Heretic who forgot that I try to be a moral and ethical aetheist and have no religious affiliations.
**Un-Desirable Destination**
*for Roger F. Malina, May 2, 2025*
The holy tower stands, a mesh of steel,
A jacob’s ladder in the wired field.
I looked up first, as you had done before,
Then turned and wandered through the lesser door.
A gravel path between the hedge rows curled,
A hint of some forsaken working world—
Warehouse of silence, stalks of barren stick,
And barbed wire dreams grown architectural thick.
A STOP sign tipped like prayer too long unkept
And rows of stockage where the silence slept.
A puddle, twig-encircled, coaxed the sky
To visit briefly, mirrored, then pass by.
Here stood the trucks, white guardians of the lot,
With leaf and blossom twinned, and one forgot—
A branch that leaned to point the path once more,
Where red and yellow barrel marked a door.
A tree stump mourned by beetles in retreat,
The garbage can still loyal to the street;
The mint, the rope that slithered like a line
Of cursive in the grammar of decline.
You walked among the relics and the signs,
Where STOP reversed is POSTS on ghostly lines.
The WWPS, the falled frame, the bird—
Each named by absence, not by any word.
And still the blue bonnets your grandmother praised
Sang silent hymns beside the silo’s blaze.
“Love Shack” the window breathed, graffiti-born,
As if desire might yet outpace the scorn.
The Unintelligible Uplift rose—
Or so it seemed, with each composer’s prose.
Yet every scene you found, and stopped, and saw,
Was hallowed by the ordinary’s awe.
O Roger, seeker in the morning’s light,
Who finds in gravel lots a sacred rite—
This is the place, half trash, half revelation:
A stop-sign god, your **Desirable Destination**.
Would you like a version in strict meter or a different poetic form?
**Wrong Desirable Destination**
*for Roger F. Malina, May 2, 2025*
The **Desirable Destination** rose, obscure—
A holy tower framed in infrastructure pure.
**Uplifting Uplook**, steel against the sky,
You took your lens and taught it how to try.
Beyond the path, a **Gravel Gate**, ajar,
Led hedged and haggard to a warehouse star.
**Sticklike Stocks**, skeletal in their stand,
Pointed to nowhere, mapped no promised land.
The **STOP Sign’s Silence** shouted upside down,
While puddles in the twigs wore nature’s crown.
A **Whitewashed Wasteland**, trucks without their load,
**Fluffy Flower**, twig-bound, marked the road.
A second tower, **Stairless Spire**, stood dumb,
While drains led nowhere, clogged with moss and crumb.
The **Framed Forgotten**, yellow, red, and white,
Lay toppled in a vignette of the blight.
A lone tree beckoned—**Branching Blessing**, wide,
While barbed wire fenced the morning from its pride.
Beneath a silo, cloud-mixed sunrise played,
On **Still-life Stump**, in gravel path decayed.
A bus, empty as logic left too long,
Waited parked with nothing but its song.
**Butterfly Boot**, a leaf-shaped whim in shade,
Nestled at shoe-tip where attention stayed.
The benches black and metal sang of none,
Their **Absent Audience** a rising sun.
The **STOP Sign Righted** now, like penance done,
In fire lane 421 by someone.
**Plastic Python**, rope across the floor,
Mimicked life that once had meant much more.
Mint. Sewer. **Kaffeine Clues** to pass,
Before the flowers dueled across the glass.
A trash can dressed in gravel walls and tin,
Held echoes of a party, love, and sin.
**Love Shack Letters** scrawled where dreams had cried,
Across from Texas Instruments, and pride.
And then—the **Blue Bonnet Benediction**, near,
Your grandmother’s voice in the ghost of the clear.
No holly in the holy, but a height
Of steel and sky in sacramental light.
So ends the walk, the camera’s revelation,
Each frame a prayer, a **Desirable Destination**.
Thank you for the clarification. Knowing that **Desirable Destination** stands as a metaphor for a *holy site*, a place of *sublime revelation* crowned by a spire or tower—though surrounded by the mundane, discarded, or profane—I now understand the needed irony, reverence, and imagery. Here’s the poem anew:
—
**Desirable Destination**
*for Roger F. Malina, May 2, 2025*
A sanctified spire of lattice and wire—
The holy electric tower. I came,
Camera in hand, to worship with the eye,
And found beneath it not flame, but frame.
A white-gravel path between hedge-priests led
To a warehouse temple—bare, not broken—
Its altar: a STOP sign turned on its head,
As if a gospel misread or misspoken.
Through thornstick thickets and barbed red fences
I glimpsed the reliquary of the road:
Clouds combed by sunlight, cattle pens like censers,
And the Silo shining, the Word abode.
A twig with blossoms—white as Easter host—
Surrounded a lone green leaf like a saint.
Another spire, a stairway without post,
Ascended nowhere. The air grew faint.
Here, metaphors began their quiet prayer:
A pipe that drained to nothing. Rows of trucks
Like apostles, poised in gravel-paved despair.
The stump, the wound. The rust that never clucks.
“WWPS,” read the sign. “What Would Pilgrims See?”
A tree half-leafed, half-burning with intent.
A fallen barrel beside a yellow gate—
The sacrament of accident.
Mint in the margins. Kaffeine in the cup.
Plastic rope curled like a serpent in penance.
Birds flew past chimneys and didn’t look up.
The soul’s ascent, or flight from sentence.
Garbage can tabernacle—gravel-walled—
Held offerings: cans, regret, some crushed delight.
Blue bonnets blooming where your grandmother called
The Unintelligible Uplift into light.
A trash-box ark. A shoe toe pointed home.
A STOP sign righted now, but none to heed it.
And photos taken, not to save but roam—
The shrine is real, even if we don’t need it.
Shall we take this further into strict metrical rhythm? Or would you like more alliterative pairings like *Mirrored Mourning* or *Hallowed Hollows* woven throughout?
**Desirable Destination**
*for Roger F. Malina, May 2, 2025*
A tall framework of metal—skyward stretched,
A **Looming Lattice**, quiet in its stance.
I came not seeking meaning, only shape,
But something in the angles held my glance.
The trail began where hedges gently part—
A **Gravel Gateway**, bordered soft and neat,
Leading to a warehouse, window-dark,
Its silence sharpened by the passing feet.
An upside-down STOP—so strangely placed—
Became a kind of punctuation mark.
Beyond, the **Sticklike Stocks** in disarray
Jutted like thoughts half-sketched against the dark.
Across a yard where cattle ghosts had passed,
A sunrise smudged with **Cloudy Clarity**
Broke through barbed wire threads and steel rebars,
Near a gravel stump’s accidental dignity.
A drain traced moss like memories in stone,
While rows of idle trucks awaited use.
A single twig, adorned with cotton blooms,
Cradled a green leaf, as if by truce.
The second tower offered nothing up—
Its steps climbed nowhere, rusting in retreat.
Beside it: “WWPS,” a mystery.
A tree leaned in, its gestures bittersweet.
A **Yellow Yardframe**, tipped red-and-white by time,
Was circled by leaves turning autumn-bent.
The road widened—not toward a plan,
But to a dumpster’s bold predicament.
Another stump. A bird beneath the leaves.
A bird above, past chimney’s silent spout.
A truck marked “142,” colorfully unnumbered.
A twig-fringed puddle beckoned doubts.
Past twigs familiar, passed once more,
A bus sat parked—its silence unfulfilled.
Shoe toes met a leaf shaped like a butterfly,
As if attention alone had willed.
A bloom of bristles, name unknown,
A branch inclined to point me home.
Black benches watched an empty lane,
Where fire-coded numbers had no claim.
Plastic rope lay curled like a thought undone.
“Mint.” “Sewer Stop.” “Kaffeine.” Signs, or jokes?
Two red flowers circled in slow cruise
Before my car, beneath spring oaks.
The gravel bin with its contents voided.
A “Love Shack” tag on a window smeared.
Texas Instruments beyond the STOP sign righted.
And blue bonnets near, as once revered.
Each moment framed but meant for no belief—
Each scene precise, but never in control.
A destination, yes—but not ideal.
Not final. Only real, and whole.
For better or for worse I will revisit this desirable destination because looking up the sky can calm the mind and prepare for work