What Is Love, Anyway? Poem by Caleb Hall

Love.
The powerful heart melting, eyeturning four-letter beauty.
Love.
The dangerous soul-chilling, orphan-making beast.
Love is handholding and winking
and roses and consumed thinking
and sweet perfume and dates.
And cancer.
Love is clear and nebulous
and obscure in plainness.
Love is risky and safe
and lengthy in prate
And drunk voicemails.
Love is birthdays and timeouts and wars
and afternoons spent pondering the girl before.
Love is standing in the rain
and loads and loads of pain.
Love is embracing the rejected
and comforting the weak
and filtering insults when you speak.
Love is patient and kind
and lying and blind.
Love is vengeful and jealous
and young and careless.
Love is selfish at its roots
and tipsy blondes in cowboy boots.
Love is sex and nothing personal
and intimate and passion
and a pocket full of numbers of girls to get back with.
Love is strobe lights and a beat
and spawns when you first meet.
Love is a tombstone: 'beloved mother and wife'
Love is standing tall amidst life.
Love is misinterpreted and perverted
and a discursive label constantly altered.

I could promise to love you forever
but a lengthy discourse might be better
in explaining what I mean.
But time is slipping so dropp into my arms
forget chances and ignore qualms.
Love, I'm here today.
Love, I'm here to stay.