I like your rhyme pattern.  What I want to see more of in your poetry is meter.  I wrote out the first stanza to examine the meter and this is what I came up with:

The first two lines present the accented syllable after one syllable (“I’ve BEEN” and “PerFORM”), and this sets up the expectation for the rest of the poem.  But the third and fourth lines start on accented syllables.  There are also a few places with two unaccented syllables in a row: “for a(while)”, “with no”, “minded (acts)”, “(play)ing a”, “(ten)nis when(ever)”, “(pos)sible”, “(Read)ers who”, “this af(fair)”.  Some of these are less disruptive to the rhythm than others (like “for a(while)” is ok because the single syllable “fra” can preserve the 1-2 rhythm).  The one that bothers me the most is “(ten)nis when(ever)”.

The count of syllables across the four lines is 14 (13 with “fra”), 12 or 13, 17, 13, but when you munge together the unaccented ones to fit the rhythm, you get 12, 11, 14, 11.

Sorry my description is so… left-brained… Is there a right-brained way to talk about metering?  Yeah, I guess there is: try to make you poems so that you can recite them to a beat.

I usually write something into a file on my machine and let it sit a while - at least a few days - before I publish it.  I like to go back and re-read later.  Sometimes I revise them, or even just delete them, and sometimes I can’t find any improvements, so I post it.  Do you do anything like that with your poems?

Dave.