A poem narrated by a poem: Poem Speak

In October 2006 during a boring train ride I realized it had been long since I wrote poetry (previously written for my school and college magazines and a few poems written during a poetry duel with my uncle). So I considered writing a poem, but it took a while to get that spark of inspiration.

Poem Speak 

I wandered alone, not knowing why.
Walking the thick jungle, looking out for the sky.
He knows I'm here, I assured my heart.
All he needs is a little head-start.
For months together have I been.
A thought, a wish, in this jungle unseen.
He set my heart beating. Now it shall not cease.
For my departure shall put this jungle at ease.
I ask him, I plead him, to set me free.
For I am a poem, yearning to be read by thee.

Written on: 27/10/2006 

 

What the poem means: 

The jungle is my mind, in which the thought of writing a poem has been going on for a long time. It remained a thought for a long time. Couldn't get started with it because I didn't find myself in a mood for writing poetry. Although once the poem found it's way out of my mind, onto paper, my mind is once again at ease and the poem is happy that I set it free. 

How it's relevant to poets

Poem Speak is essentially a poem writing itself. During the literature survey for my MTech in Artificial Intelligence, I came across the fact that neurons go through the jungle of the brain and are guided to other neurons via guidance proteins. Neurons even tend to seek out connections. Poem Speak poetically personifies (if I could use the term liberally) the thought process of every writer or poet who is stuck with writers block and eventually figures out what to write. The process of thinking of what to write perhaps being physically manifested by the neurons in their brain seeking out connections and building a pathway of prose which takes shape and finds its way to becoming alive in the minds of everyone who reads it.

I submitted the poem to a weekly magazine for speculative fiction. Although it wasn't accepted, the reviewer wrote back appreciating it, saying that since the poem had a fun twist at the end, it worked well and caused him to re-read the poem.

 

How to use Github SSH when working with more than one Github account?

I had earlier written about how to use an SSH key to clone, push and pull from Github.When working with more than one Github account, Git automatically considers only the first key even if you add a second key file in the ~/.ssh folder. To make Git recognize the right file, you need to add a new config file in that folder.

First add a new ed25519 file (like how it's normally done) for the second account and give it a new name like id2_ed25519.
Then create a new file named config.

Now add this exact text into the config file:

# First GitHub account
Host github.com
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

# Second GitHub account
Host github-second
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id2_ed25519

If there are any errors related to file permissions, change the permission using chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id2_ed25519 but it's unlikely there would be such issues.

That's it. Now to clone from the first account you can use the equivalent of:

git clone git@github.com:username1/gitRepository1.git

To clone from the second account you can use the equivalent of:

git clone git@github-second:username2/gitRepository2.git