As a rule, small presents are the same for everyone. This time I was baffled by choice. Not only XL, L or M, but the inscription on the breast as well. It is always hard to make a choice, because any choice exludes all other alternatives. I tried to choose from the catalogue, but suddenly, while I was studying the inscriptions, new t-shirts arrived on the shelf with one more inscription, missing in the catalogue. As if especially for me. I did not doubt any more. It was saying: “I am an East European criminal who dies 16 to 17 times a day”.

I’ve been walking all day long with the phrase in my mind. I do not need to put the t-shirt on any more as the phrase got engraved on the inside of my forehead. The more I think about it, the more I get envious of the phrase author’s imagination. It is like a line of a perfect poetry, a poem, if you like. It is absurd from the first glance but plumbing deeper – very rich and provocative. It says so much about the one who created it as well as the one who dare to wear it on his breast – as a good poem does about the one who wrote it and the one who reads it.

The creator of the phrase imagines an East European as a superman or even god. Not all gods die and resurrect a couple of times, some have succeeded in resurrecting just once. Even if I did not consider myself as a criminal, I could have reason to be proud.

But am I not a criminal? Have I not violated almost all of the Ten Commandments during my life? Have I not committed adultery, have I not lied, not stolen? Is it not me who constantly kills mosquitoes, ants, flies, mice and moles in my countryside home? Am I not the one who exceeds the speed limits constantly? Is it not me who violates rules of language when writing poems?

Just one thing I am not sure about – do I really die 16 or 17 times a day? I think it is a small exaggeration.

Eugenijus Alisanka (c) Michele Hutchison, Poetry International festival 2010

If poetry existed, there would be no novels.
If poetry existed, there would be festivals celebrating the titles of poems, festivals for reading poems by the use of deep-brain stimulators, congregations for (and against) sistine sestinas, festivals for dancing the grammar, sleeping the haiku.
If there was poetry, we wouldn’t really sleep.
We wouldn’t creep either.
If poetry existed, we would have iambic tea, shampoos for troubadours, power plants using packed words.
If there were to be something like poetry, we would live in three-point-five-dimensional rooms.
And everyone would have a room.
If poetry existed, Ulysses would still be on his trip. And each country would have several Inger Christensens and Derek Walcotts.
At borders we would have to show our favourite book of poetry instead of a passport.
If poetry existed, there would be a Vatican for Metrics.
Brokers dealing with interpretations.
There would grow not only passion fruits but passionate panic fruits as well. And we would drink the milk of mother poems — for that poetry would be a fluid.
If poetry existed, we would clear 12 million hectares of tropical rain forest a year to save that poetry.
If poetry existed, no one would walk on stones anymore.
If there was poetry, literary criticism would be poetical as well.
And our capital would be called Poetry.
Electricity would be poetricity.
If poetry existed, nobody would be a poet.
If poetry existed, we would visit non-fiction parks every now and then, and drop some words into the cages.
If poetry existed, we could play the Himalayas on Sahara pipes.
Every new sentence would be our only home.
If poetry existed, there would be no desire for poetry.

Read more by and about Ron Winkler on www.poetryinternational.org.