At our last NEA Big Read Book Club meeting in March at the Decatur Library, we wrote a poem as a collective based on themes and our own responses to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. So basically, we created our artistic response! See it’s not that scary! Our task was to describe a chosen theme from Bradbury’s novel using the five senses and we each had about 5-minutes to write down one line for each sense based on our own chosen theme.

These are the combined responses, and we may be biased, but it turned out to be quite a beautiful poem:

Humanity

tastes like the sweet nectar of honeysuckle on a warm summer day,
like habanero, jalapenos, chipotle peppers in adobe sauce, and tabasco
overloading your buds, you think you can handle it until it burns
a spoon full of warm smooth custard so silky and sweet
on the tongue you want to spend time savoring
before you share it with your lover,
like the crunch of bland non good labeled “yummy”,
like the unfamiliar and who is that wearing my clothes,
like the first slurpy bite of a ripe peach and a library fine

sounds like children’s laughter interrupting a political debate,
like heavy butterfly wings fluttering melody and harmony
like echoed dreams remembered then forgotten,
like hearing a newborn that you instantly fall in love with,
teeth grinding like apprehension and this is none of your business,
the sniffing of mechanical death the wispy branches of a willow tree

feels like warm hands on cold skin drawing you close to comfort
like a friend when in control and an enemy when mad, like the warmth of fire smells,
like a portal to another dimension, an internal pull in your gut by a freshly fed hook,
like judgement, like a too tight bra or misplaced love,
like expectations not exchanged,

looks like the reflection of a dandelion, like light yellow, orange and red,
like the perfect kind of wallpaper,
like happiness the bright in her eyes a map with no street names,
like things you want to change but can’t
because flaws are larger than they appear,
like multiple televised images that mean nothing,
like watching kindness between strangers,
a man buying food for the homeless

smells like the sweet fragrance of Clarisse’s hair as she turns to leave,
like metaled understanding or flesh after the fact,
like moving in slow motion while looking over your shoulder
or waking up in a cold sweat after the fear,
like a warm home after a long day,
like the blues on a warm summer night while the moon is full
and the air is damp with humanity