So, we’re doing syntax in the English linguistics course I’m taking, and in today’s lecture, we went through the various ways of determining whether or not a string of words is a phrase or not — a mildly put important part of the whole syntax bit. One of the examples the lecturer used was the sentence “He wouldn’t describe the accident to the police” and compared it with the sentence “He didn’t describe the journey to the mountains” — sentences that are comprised of the same sequence of word categories, but have different structures. Anyhoo, during his demonstration of the “move things around a bit and see what happens” method, he presented us with the non-grammatical English sentence “The accident to the police, he wouldn’t describe”. This non-sentence, while not making sense in regular English, does however make sense if you view it in light of the concept of poetic syntax. It also has a certain rhythmicality to it, and so, naturally, it inspired me to write this poem:

The accident to the police
He wouldn’t describe;
One a previous occasion
He had tried them to bribe.
He had parked on a spot
Where he wasn’t supposed,
And to that idea
They were wholly opposed.
When a bobby came up
To protest the event,
To slip him a fiver
He was very hell-bent.
The bobby was outraged;
He arrested our guy,
Or that is, he tried;
He was punched in the eye.
In light of all this
One should not be surprised,
If the demands of the law
Our hero defies.