You penned some inspirational verse on swine flu, in the wake of Felix Dennis's "This little piggy caught a virus". I was particularly enamoured of dustbuster's take on the "crisis" – which, incidentally, has made way for the latest press-engulfing headlines: MPs' expenses.

So I'm hoping you'll be at least as inspired by this new topic as Carol Ann Duffy, who debuts as poet laureate with the stirring couplet: "What did we do with the trust of your vote? Hired a flunky to flush out the moat," which she recited at a school in Manchester.

There was no more to come on the subject of expenses from our new laureate. "It's just too much of an open goal for me so I'll wait for something a bit more subtle to write about," she said. Sublety? Pah! Can you do any better? And if it proves too tricky to find a rhyme for expenses, feel free to – like the papers struggling to compress their headlines – call them exes.