No Standing Ovation For Grandstanding Poem by John Sensele

Don't provide a culinary delight
On a gourmet's table like a goose
Instead, stand up for just causes and alight
Your upward mobility flight of stairs like the Indian grey mongoose

To strut your agility to take on and slay cobras
Which in one form or another your tranquil life attempt to plague
As verbal problems in Algebra
You crack with ease in the league

Where mathematical equations you munch
By the dozen to feed the appetite
That taps and harnesses the curiosity branch
In your bid to develop the tripartite

Arrangement in which your soul flourishes and nourishes to while away time
Productively when from mundane platitudes
You take leave, preferring instead to climb
The ladder of conciliation and reconciliation on platforms where positive attitudes

Couched in genuine concern you reinvent
Curiosity in techniques that slay animosity
Embedded in foibles that vent
Frustrations in ways that conflate religiosity

With mumbling and mouthing nonsense
That the less pious you treat
Like lesser Christians whose sense
Of spiritual uplift you greet

With disdain and reluctance
Although Jesus preaches accommodation
Of sinners and backsliders without grandstanding askance
That salvation mission meets without any standing ovation.