I could begin this piece with a lot of statistics regarding absent fathers, do - nothing dads, one deposit - no return males, but, nah....

Let me begin with a racist riddle from the 60s:

Q) What's the definition of MASS CONFUSION ?

A) Father's day in Harlem

 not funny,-eh?

Ah, but that was then and this is now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah (hmmm, sounds like the refrain from and old song) I know, I KNOW there are some extraordinary single mom's out there, but that's just the point, EXTRAORDINARY EXTRA-ORDINARY. When I say I know, I actually DO KNOW some of those moms. AH,some of my best friends are extraordinary moms... and they  do amazing jobs with their kids.

This city is littered, yeah, littered with the kids that these so-called men have abandoned . The kids that have been tossed aside. Ok, maybe some guy comes around to get a fried steak and a few minutes of private time with mom. Maybe she'll tell him "that was your daddy" -  he's not. A daddy is there for the bad times. Dad's there to teach you manners and baseball. Dad helps balance mom and mom helps balance dad , and when there is no dad , it makes it hard for the best mom to balance.

Remember this quote from the movie Tombstone:

"a man like Ringo has a great big hole,right in the middle of him. He can never kill enough ,steal enough or inflict enough pain to fill it."

That's the middle of a lot of young 'would-be' men. They really  would be men if only they had someone, preferably some man in their life to love them, to help show them the way, some man to help them up when they fall down, to  hold them when they cry, to scream "that's MY boy" when they do good, and some man to help them back on track when they derail.

Yes, my listening audience knows that my father was far from the man I describe above, but for all his failings, I still learned manners, respect, I saw a man that loved and protected his wife, and learned a lot about the man I didn't want to be, too. At least I had  a yard stick to measure by...many of the boys today have their self-worth tied up in bad knots that tell them the measure of a man is what their fathers were, one-deposit, no return.

The silence is deafening, except when a bullet cuts them down, we hear them screaming on the ground, and somewhere else, the screams of a newborn, maybe his, and it starts all over again...