You can call me Daddy
the master of disaster
and I shall call you Stanley
if I wish.

You may name me Madame
the lady of the land
luxuriously plump,
as I like it or lump it,
lording it over you,
these last days
before the empire cracks
and the apocalypse shivers
in its final clitoral climax.
I’ll be your Madame;
you’ll be my Max.

Today I can be a Renaissance song
for many a voice to sing along.
You can be an Elizabethan chant
for all the Brexicutioners to choose to rant.
Together we’ll end up the best of pals.
I can call you Betty.
You’ll name me your Madrig-Al.

Our identities don’t matter.
They change all the time.
Our roles vary like the days,
like the tides.
Like the ides – or Middlemarch –
change is always coming
and we are always in transition.
Whatever name you have for me
I will defy.
Whoever you think you want me to be
I will always be I.