Two Original Poems Another batch from The Good Men Project

i.

Picking up in 2025 where I left off in 2024 (and all along, really), getting late-stage capitalism in my sights, filtered through an unsparing look at masculinity and the ways it continues to be manufactured, where atrocities like MAGA and Musk make sense to millions of misguided Americans (stop me before I alliterate again). Little introduction is necessary, certainly for the second poem; the first one sprang—as these things do—from a real-time observation that I, one of the more analog dudes I know, seldom if ever carries cash anymore, and how the ripple effects of our info-overload triumph of all things Tech in the name of Convenience, as always, ultimately impacts the least fortunate amongst us. White liberal guilt? Sure. But mostly a somber acknowledgment that even when our better angels have half a chance, our habits and “evolution” are making the world a colder, less accessible place.

ii.

Late-Stage Capitalism is No Longer Having Small Bills for People Holding Signs at Stoplights

It’s the thought that counts won’t cut it, we think, considering the exchanges not occurring, best intentions disrupted by current events that force acknowledgment: at least in another epoch we still carried money, loose change and stray bills in our wallets or pockets, the occasional bounty buried inside winter jackets. Now we have plastic and pocket-sized point of sale machines, enterprise forever attached to the business of living—impulse purchases or emergencies all accessible with the literal flick of a wrist. This is the miracle of modern life, we’re told: we want everything faster, cheaper, easier, better, and more of it all the time, so the wheels of commerce grind and execute, accordingly. These advancements overlook, or else are designed to disguise, the other reality, which is how this glaring gap between those with & those without widens, expanding every fiscal year like the universe itself, which could be a wish upon a star that simply grew out of control and now relies on laws of nature and impartial edicts imparted by Econ professors and Op-Ed writers, none of whom can tell us if there’s a way to compensate for the fact that we don’t have paper or coins to hand to the nameless supernovas, proliferating beneath stoplights, praying to be pulled away from the black holes into which our planet’s gravity has consigned them.

iii.

In the Weeds

Questions: once wealthy, what do you work for? What are you moving toward? How do you get your fix when the blue blood turns black? What can you acquire if everyone else has been killed? How can you make the money promise to preserve you, that it won’t give its heart to the next influx of hungry heroes? Is it necessary to burn some of this Internet oil, to build flaming battlements of deferred hedge funds, to cut and run with the 401(k), to cash it all in at cost if and when that ugly day ever comes? Why not get out now? Walk away, smiling, untouchable, gliding directly out the back door, no lawyers or accountants or cops marching alongside eventually, inevitably?

Secrets: the sold shares, the cooked books, the dirty deeds, the dodgy deals, the erstwhile economy, the wrath of gods greater than themselves, the fifth act of an unwitting tragedy, the unknowable answers of what might ultimately await us, after layoffs, in the new org chart. Or perhaps this awkward energy originated somewhere else, somewhere outside office suites. Maybe it’s an uncoordinated yet collective epiphany: that despite the brazen new world we’ve created, the irritating, obsolete old order still clamors on occasion, still has some things to say, still needs to be accounted for, however uncomfortable the timing.

Conclusions: Because. In the end, there are forces even more malevolent than money urging us on: posterity, pride, and mostly the inescapable understanding that even we might die someday. And, after all, there is empire to defend, legacies to establish, futures to foment, electronic souls to enshrine. There is, in sum, a lot of work left to do, our productivity finding new ways of pulling us down and drowning us.

*Again, my gratitude to The Good Men Project for publishing my work (archive of poems, fiction, and non-fiction here).

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About Sean Murphy

I’m Sean Murphy, and you might have heard me on NPR’s “All Things Considered” or seen my name in The New York Times or The Huffington Post, among others. As a contributor to outlets ranging from The Good Men Project and PopMatters to The Village Voice and The Weeklings, my aim has always been to connect, provoke, and celebrate the stories that define us.

I founded 1455, a non-profit dedicated to celebrating creativity and community, and I direct the Center for Story at Shenandoah University, but I’ve been telling—and savoring—words for as long as I can remember. Since I first began writing, I’ve been obsessed with the ways powerful narratives explain our world while creating new possibilities, how art broadens awareness and builds empathy. I think we’d all agree that understanding how storytelling works—and why it’s important—has never been more critical, for our collective and individual well-being.