My Dark-Eyed Friend

My Dark-Eyed Friend is the first book by the Canadian Poet Birdland Slim. The book deals primarily with ideas and experiences with loss. The poetry includes the authors personal experience in love, family and societies loss of important artists like singer Gord Downey, Leonard Cohen, the Saskatchewan poet Andrew Suknaski and singer Dolores O'Riordan. The title My Dark-Eyed Friend refers to a series of fictional poems about different levels of loss, including loss of trust and position in relationships. The poems are addressed to no one person only to a composite of people the poet has known. They convey the knowledge and learning that can occur during experiences of loss, which not always can be good and may leave one with emotional scars and questions. Loss and separation of time is also experienced through the poets remembrances of an unrequited love affair decades after the relationship came to an end. The poems examine the futility of trying to hang onto the past and make sense of it. The book is a personal account of loss and separation told in the first person narrative.