perlpodspec also has the following example:

=item He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign
mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and
tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy
scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally
unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
[download]

So, longer texts are allowed.

I guess that it is up to the specific renderer whether it picks an initial "* " as an indication to produce a bullet list (like pod2html apparently does)