It was more of a short story than a poem, despite its form, and I quite frequently ravaged both rythm and rhyme to accomodate the plot, I’m sad to say.

Trochaic hexametre, then? Or iambic pentameter?

Ah, Gods, I remember back when I wrote that kind of poetry. How despicably awful it was. But I guess it’s a phase most of us more or less intelligent guys go through, innit?

As for the “He tried them to bribe” bit, that’s actually an integral part of the piece. Not only does it instantiate poetic syntax again, it also, through that instantiation, contributes to emphasise the pseudo-meaning I’ve kinda interpreted into it in retrospect.

EDIT: Not to mention all the typos… ye gods…

So, here’s a copy of the e-mail:

“Hi!

On pages 17-18 in today’s lecture notes, you used the example “He will never describe the accident to the police” to explain the constituency tests, and on page 18, you presented us with the non-grammatical sentence “The accident to the police, he will never describe”. While being non-grammatical, it has a certain catchy rhythm to it. This made me remember the concept of poetic syntax, which in turn inspired me to write a couple of lines more, continuing the narrative, and when I got home, I wrote the remaining 14 lines or so in about 15 minutes.

So, seeing as you’re kind of my muse here, I thought I’d be polite and share:

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.

Humbly,
a student who pays more attention in class than this e-mail would seem to indicate.”