Hmmm. I want to like this poem, because I think you write with good clarity, but there is a lot that bothers me and I think it needs some careful focus and effort. First of all, it's almost a calling card of someone trying to pretend to understand a war they have no idea about when they take the easy road to try to gain credibility by calling it "'Nam". It doesn't feel realistic to me.
But besides that, the poem is very shallow. It deals with a single idea and doesn't even go further than presenting it. When a beautiful person becomes ugly, no one has anything to say.
I think this poem would be interesting and worthwhile if you could go just a little beyond the end that you seem to have chose for it. What kind of silence was it? A pitiful one? One that meant they just wanted to ignore the problem instead of face it? A mean and intentional one? Are you referring only to the beauty or to a potential political problem, too? Dig deeper into these people characters. Us people are really complex things, and presenting only one side of us in a situation marks it as something that feels fake. We want to believe you and be on your side, but you have to prove to us that you know us a little bit better than that, right?
The last question I have is why he returned love (and what kind of love was it? like, just town care or maybe he was a big figure in government?) with going to war? What situation was he in where that seemed appropriate?
Please PM me with questions or comments about my review. Good luck!
And above all, keep writing!
But as a stand alone poem it does very good as well. It shows how although beauty can show love, personality does as well. And it kind of shows how things do change a little bit, when your beauty is gone. Because although his peers did welcome him back, they did it in silence.
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