Hi, One thing I noticed right off was that you do not confirm if you connect to the database or not. Add this type line to your code when you are dealing with the database handle.

my $dbh = Mysql->connect($poemDB, sulfericacid, ----) 
or die $Mysql::db_errstr;
[download]

Also where is $poemDB declared from, use the -w option to see if it has been declared when you use it. That should give you a start. Also make sure you quote "sulfericacid" as a string too.
Hope this helps and good luck