This one I'm not so sure about

Fruit of a Loom
--
Walking behind some pitiful son courting his father speaking on the losses
and the winnings of his basketball team, I grasp the emptiness
in their combination. And this one time we played there
and won against the second string. He speaks arms cocked

ready to fire out the next cartridge, but the barrel’s holed and crooked,
his fingers lacking calluses, trigger cradled at the bend.
About to go off with a pound of propelled lead shrapnel into his forearm.
A sulfuric blast to handle, We won our first game in two weeks last night.

The breath of the congratulatory father sinks back into a lung—or both.
I don’t know. I grow tired of hearing the blasts come from Highland
living rooms on Sundays when athletes return to campus,
fearing the signature groan over the telephone receiver. Dad, we lost it.

And then the pomp on the trampled carpet alerts the clueless duplex
entertainers. Blame the color of the walls and assume the sand-tone should’ve been
a brighter shade. The restructuring ensues. Another wraps a cotton scarf
middle around his neck, tied tight to the shower curtain bar. Fruit of a Loom.

They’ll install something else, an apartment’s worth of faulty hooks
that, when pressured, break. Snap off, thud. Why compete when
the exit door is a bulletproofed one way mirror? The soulless
at the opposing side pointing their glowing cigarettes in assumption.

I wait tables and dish out shortcomings ill-fit for customers
and have concluded that the extremity in competition is enough to cut
off both arms in failure, Paraplegic. No one has to play then, and at least
there’s an attainable success there, in the art of loss.

*
The text here is apologetic. Sorry folks. I had to accommodate for the line breaks.