is that comma taken?

I'm a comma person, no, not COMA, but commas. They give me pause, and they let me think, almost as if there's something magical about the way the concave punctuation mark shifts and sifts, not really turning its back on the rest of the thought or sentence, but giving room to say, yes, think of this first, then the other follows. The comma gathers and shields, yet separates like a sieve or a levee, although it never really marginalizes as much as the period or the semicolon. The comma doesn't intrude as much and isn't as showy as the exclamation point, and it isn't indecisive like the question mark.

I use lots of commas in my writing, and especially in my poetry, especially in catalogs. Some folks think its b/c I'm trying a gimmick, but it isn't, really. It's just, well, the method I use to give way to other thoughts, to lead them in, like guiding successive ideas and phrases to come out one by one.

Or, it's because my teachers didn't teach me how to use punctuation marks.