Try to mind your own business
and if you must read on
empty your head of everything
but the words you read before you.
Accept no association between them
and any thing gone before
or anything you anticipate.

Try not to judge on what you’ve heard
or read from the mouths and pens of others
and seek quickly the countervailing argument.
Judge rather the speaker by what expectations
and prejudices are implied in that speech
for those are the only meanings of speech—
It is never about the object of speech
but the speaker only.

If you read on, leave yourself behind
which is impossible I know but leave, say
your clothing at least, those artifacts
in which you swathe yourself and confuse with who you are
which is neither your wardrobe nor the birthday suit
you wore when you splashed in the bath
and followed a strange creature with a fascination
which your intensity has not quite matched lately.

Follow this strange creature
through the labyrinth of your mind, not confusing
its thoughts with yours, your fears or expectations
to the goal you once gave yourself as a little girl
or a little boy without reserve and without fear.
And so, having come so far, read, reader: read on.

© Dan Goorevitch 2009