Help With Poem - Please!!!

Here's a poem I was intending to enter in the eisteddfod this weekend... there's one problem - I don't like it, and I don't know why!  Maybe it's the rhyme scheme, or maybe because I didn't write it from emotion (which is how I usually write).  Anyway, I would very much appreciate some constructive criticism, so please tell me the brutal truth or reassure me if it really ok.  Thanks everyone!




The stage is a bubble where things always go wrong,
But all is resolved by a speech or a song.
Time and real life are put at a stand still
As all pass into a separate world.
Where nothing foreign can penetrate until
Back to reality one finds himself hurled.

The set is a doorway to a fantasy land
Where speech is a song, and one’s wish a command.
The rocks, or the towers, whatever it be
Are the windows into that realm so distant
Though you’re so close you can hear and see
The land that’s so real and yet non-existent.

The actors are puppets that live, breathe and speak
They are shadows that carry an air of mystique.
Who are the people behind the layers of paint?
Are they anything like the figures they play?
Is he really laughing?  Is she really faint?
Or do they find sweet relief in their playact display?

The curtains are a cruel jolt back to reality.
They kill all the characters with one foul sweep of finality.
And with empty seats, empty stage, empty hall
We leave until we can do it again.
And so we return to life, quiet and small
Until we come once more to entertain.

For if the stage is a bubble with no link to real life
Why do we go through the stress and the strife
Of every show? There’s one link, you know,
That all of us stage-show people can claim:
We’re entertainers, and so for every show
People’s laughter or tears is to our gain.