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This chapbook explores five areas of love—pain, sex, aesthetics, romance, and inspiration—with prose poems and songs. Mostly addressed from a male "I" to a female "you," a few pieces are written by a mystery woman to a man. In one instance, the poet tries on an urban dialect. As well as a plurality of voices, the poems illustrate a spectrum of feelings associated with love, from positive to negative. While employing entertaining and descriptive metaphors like swords, drowning, and cancer, most of the language also expresses complex emotions in a straightforward, accessible manner. Outside of a couple of places described, the poems' setting is the human heart and are universally relatable.
Love may be the same subject of every poem, but a diverse presentation, ranging from one-line offerings to lyrics, rhyming to free verse, lifts the collection to new heights. The poems strive toward a God-centered ethic. However, they also name God as a victim when lovers hurt one another. As the source of love, the poems acknowledge that God is also the victor when love abides. The verses conclude that pain and celebration go hand in hand. "The pain of love is the gain that true love has been proven when it's stood the test of time." Exploring true love, God's love, is the aim of this book. Its careful organization by type of love and its religiosity show that it achieves its goal of describing love and directing loving feelings toward a lofty and crafted end. This book offers an insightful, succinct, and colorful approach to a common topic.