good guys are going to Mars

good guy bad guy
clashing sides
each takes a mask for each perceiving kind
in dull tones
whatever tones
are those
each citizen
loves to hear,
per the landscape
that built his dreams

good guy and bad guy
clashing surfaces
each moving energy picks up an artifice
picks up a script
casts it casually off
when its time has run out
when for one heartstopped pause
nobody knows
what is good
what is loved
what to hate
where to stand
mumbles odd
until we are told
by the megaphone
speakerphone
group chat
image man
who the good man is
now

my good guy your bad guy
such blatantly parodied
human subtlety
insulted perceptivity
here is an angel
here is a conqueror
here's a preserver
here's a destroyer
blacker and whiter
it's blacker than white
and whiter than might
we not have grown tried
of this trope
that insults us?
bothers us
forgets us
tells us:
land's land
and that's that
and that he is the good guy
who stands on the hide
of the beast
slain as he was singing folk melodies,
reciting epics from men of his motherland,
dancing for only the sun
that the good guy cannot even hear;
he is busy with teaching his methods
with handing out medals
with crushing competitors
ingeniously! with writing bestsellers.
He gets a new epithet.
He gets in the headline.
They don't use the language
they've already used
so their words can slip by us,
more easily flip us,
softly slip into us
under our minds,
but we always know,
check in with ourselves,
under group panic,
or we would feel
existentially threatened
if we couldn't say
who is the good guy
here
(who cares about there?
who cares that the other side of the planet is another planet?
Mars is right here!
Somehow Mars is closer to us than Iran.
Mars is breeding a language we still understand,
unlike Cantonese.
Our Mars is an image lord
a pedestal'd redhead
our most universal
accepted response
to fall back on
should we ever
need to be easily clever
or falter on
what is good,
at least for a year).