Tres Comas

EL Kamaal

1
I married phonetics in the church of grammar. Calling a wolf a wolf is another way of impressing a language bride, so I respect my second tongue by calling a spade a spade in front of its rake mother. I also adhere to the rules of reading, as fast as the legs of a starved cheetah, escorting its prey into the slaughterhouse of its teeth until the linguistic millipede—head-curved, and lone—came, blocking the smoothness of my flow. I felt a pause in my breath—as short as sleep compared to death.

2
This is what happens when the pause
Lasts long: I can’t kill myself holding
My breath, but my breath can exhaust itself
Out of frustration of getting abandoned.

3
But out of the page, a comma is me, halting
At my desk, typesetting reality out of fiction.
It is the tip of my long middle finger, putting
Full stop at the end of every sentence, nullifying
The image of my most beautiful creation.
It is also the cries, and suspense, resting
On the slippery floor of my audience throats.

4
Out of the page, two commas are out there,
In the living room, doing nothing.
Two commas are the beds in the theater
Pleading recuperation for their bodies’ heads.
They are you and me, hating our lives
To the blood and bone. They are everything out of normal
Still breathing loud, still breathing clear.

5
The three commas are everyone.
They are the oak trees,
Growing wide in everyone’s backyard
With the forming of the day,
With the greying of the noon,
With the snowing cool of the summer,
With the westing of the sun,
With the hoofing spree of every wind
With the headquarters of violence

Until it grows over everyone’s roof
At the old age of the starry midnight
When every hand is inside themselves
Cuddling relaxation;

Until the three commas eventually crossed
The street of our breath, giving us hands
To see the beautiful legs of the Lord
In the presence of the flawless of heaven.