A Comma, Please

Words on a screen

Make a Polaroid of headlines

Camouflaged by mass

By uncountable number

 

A chorus of sound

sings too many lines

in too many voices

and too loud a word

 

The bass line crashes in,

one long run-on sentence

Like a runaway train

With no commas for pause

 

Stop the drums a moment

So I can figure all this out

This barrage on the senses

That hasn’t stopped to see

I can no longer hear the melody

 

Gotta hear where it’s all going

And where it all began

Gotta hear the forest hum

Through the multiplying trees

 

So faint the phrase

So steady and pure

So hard to find

Midst all this noise

 

I need a comma, please

A pause in the sentence

I just need to hear it

Coursing quiet

with its ethereal force

that I might live awake

Just want to be awake