in reply to "use" location within a program - it matters??

CGI is a better replacement for cgi-lib.pl, which is long obsolete. Your CGI->new constructor consumes the POST input leaving nothing for cgi-lib to chew on. CGI.pm has a compatibility mode you get by importing ":cgi-lib".

use CGI qw/:cgi-lib/;
See CGI for details.

After Compline,
Zaxo