The Thing Nine 70 Poem by Anne Tardos

Determining what constitutes this "phony stuff"—is the thing.
Try sensing when it's okay to open your mouth.
Sometimes it's preferable to not sing, to not speak.

Yet I can't break it off in the middle.
There are certain rules to follow in these poems.

Gentle, modest, unassuming, minimal, and easy to follow rules.
Take line seven, for example, this very line here.

Or line eight, the penultimate one in this exercise.
The ninth usually gets to deliver a punch line.