Someone wrote a poem for me and I don't understand it

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Can someone help me figure it out? I love poetry but it's very difficult for me to figure out most of the time. Please help?


Here's the poem -


Oh! For every bit of sinew I knit and sew to

Seamlessness, so I become the more

Indefectible; for in performing fine darning --

Such an act!

In this realm a lesser miracle --

Behold! I moulder,
Mould -- trumpet serpentine --

In the place of skin, the finest silk.

Where hung patterned silk, woven with the soul -

Damp yarn, skin, cold, soft, downy, incarnadine.

Aha! Confusing verse!

I think it's basically about mortality, and even while we try to perfect our souls, our bodies work against us.

That confuses me, I don't know why this person would write a poem about mortality to me. Actually that's really weird.

Yeah, I guess if someone said they'd written that for me, I'd be confused too.
Perhaps they're saying you make them feel vulnerable?

Maybe, they are trying to impress you.

It was in response to me telling him how important he is to me and how much I've learned to love myself from him and other stuff.

I thought maybe the fabric stuff was a metaphor for our friendship growing stronger or something but I really don't understand metaphor.

In that case, I might read the poem as a message that he's worried you might idealize him.

That sounds like some Mars Volta lyrics or something. i was singing it in my head in Cedric's voice.

Wait does all the stuff surrounding it change the meaning because he wrote a message before the poem that I'm one of his favorite people and I think he told me he wanted to say something as sweet as what I had said, and referred to it as a love poem which it isn't. And then I felt stupid because I didn't get it. I mean he's gay and I'm gay so it's not a love poem but... egh.

I'm gonna go watch My Little Pony now.

I read it as a poem about taking joy and pride in fixing and improving something/you; gradually becoming indefectible/flawless through the process of moulding and knitting worn cold skin into fine silk "woven with the soul".

It's not a love poem, haha, although it does contain love, and certainly poetry exchanged between friends, particularly of such complexity, speaks of a deeper love.

I read the poem as meaning that he's trying to be super-deep and artistic, but just ends up being really strange and confusing instead.

Or let her know she has bad socks...

It's not Blake, but it's not bad, actually.

What does "trumpet serpentine" mean?

A thousand dull knives itchin' in your spleen
Coaxial mandolin soylent green
Hexagon fractals in smithereens
Transient trumpet serpentiiiine!



Then a five minute bongo solo.

I don't quite know why but this cracked me up really hard.

The person who wrote me this poem, he and I, despite both being queer, we're certain we'd make a fierce Republican power couple. Even though we're not Republicans. He's also in the field of Neuroscience and I have just barely started my education, which hasn't historically been a pathway to politics HOWEVER we are optimists.

I would like to write him a poem back but I think I will just put something on a canvas.

Like an anatomically correct human heart, cradled by an octopus wearing a top hat and spectacles.

Does this seem like an appropriate response, at least as a concept?