Slow Puncture

I’d use every one of them – each tiny symbol / sign –
to ‘light up’ my words … and write eye-catching lines:
the comma; the colon; the ellipsis; the slash;
the question mark; the hyphen; the en and em dash.

In stanzas 1-2, it was all there on show
(Was there nothing not used? The short answer: No!)
But then I came to an unfortunate juncture:
my punctuation, you see, got a slow puncture

and those small, helpful marks which let my words breathe
or made me understood, all started to leave.
Hyphens unhappened semi colons got missed
apostrophes went awol in commaless lists.

“And what of the question marks Oh yes even those
(while my brackets and speech marks forgot how to close
When the last comma left there was nowhere to pause
my words floated by in one endless clause

and no one could tell once the full stops departed
where one sentence ended and another one started
capitals absconded and meaning left too
as the breaks between stanzas bowed then withdrew just like the line breaks 
then all sense gotblurred thelastthingtogowasthegapsbetweenwords