Something to Alight -- My Personal Semantic

I know I've mentioned time and again that I would post something I've written, and yet have failed to do so on a number of occasions. So instead of merely mentioning it, I've decided to post a poem that I've been working on since I was sixteen. I wrote it about four years ago for a self-portrait project in my English class when I was still a junior in high school. I'm currently using it as a device in the novel that I'm working on, so it's undergone some major changes from the original version.

It probably still needs some reworking and improvement, so I'd love to hear any comments about it if you have any. I don't really have an official title for it now, but in the meantime I've been calling it "Something to Alight -- My Personal Semantic."

Here goes nothing...

Something to Alight -- My Personal Semantic

I am a bottle with a secret message inside
Floating and drifting away, hoping someone finds me
in the tumult of the tides.

I am a thorny flower beginning to bloom,
Fazed by the beauty of the rest of the garden,
Struggling to stand up straight and
Not wilt too soon.

I am an open book, my pages a chronicle in the making.
But most fail to read between the lines for
The invisible ink fools those who
Think they've read the whole story.

Try to define its words like the sages.
I dare you to confine me within these pages,
To capture the essence, the nonsense verse of my personal semantic,
My abstraction.

Go on, I dare you. Rip me apart. Break me open.
Burn the script and bury its spine in sand.
All you’ll get are blisters in your hands.

All you’ll ever find are the fractions
Of the savage boom-boom within this
Cage that’s rusted over with the
Brown-red residue of shadow and shame.

I blunt my words until they hurt
More than the sharpest sword
Severing skin and searing sinew,
Shattering my walls as I linger,
Waiting, withering, wanting

Something to alight.

As I scream aloud to breathe anew,
My heart and mind ablaze
Flickering bright white and blue.

I am fed with oxygen
My life renewed.