You were closer with the original version. I think the recasting here is too far with it, and it feels terribly strained. You had one such poem a good while back, I recall, and it took getting away from it for some time before you could find a happy compromise; this may be the same.
I think what you need is a medium between a regular rhyme in each line within each stanza, and an irregular rhyme that forms an overall pattern. That was more what I was trying to indicate in my post... An attention to rhyme, but without restricting yourself too much... have a pattern, but it has some play (and does avoid excessive use of false rhyme -- an occasional example of that is fine, it's when it becomes the dominant thing that it becomes the problem.
Walk slowly in the Land of Dolls.
Tread carefree and careful,
Await the blind to come and call.
Come all, carry none, the day is dull,
The dolls speak with plastic appall
Come all, prettier songs to spill,
Plastic young, forever glass.
Lackadaisical
Thoughts lack morality,
Only lips and brutality,
On plastic faces.
"call/appall" is fine, and "careful/dull", though not a perfect rhyme, also works quite well; and you could get away with not having the final two lines rhyme if either "spill"/"lackadaisical" or "glass"/"faces" were a true rhyme (preferably both). Then you are having an irregular but discernible rhyme scheme, which also allows a fair amount of freedom rather than the "
aaaa" structure of the new version. In other words, you'd be establishing an "
abcbcde dffd" sort of pattern, which you could either stick with in the second set, or vary (as long as it creates a discernible pattern of its own). You could, for instance, reverse the order above, or make the first line below have a rhyme to continue either the "spill/lackadaisical" rhyme (if it were a true rhyme) or the "glass/faces" rhyme (if it were a true rhyme), and go from there either forward with new rhyming (but
not, except for your final three lines, two lines together -- it should be alternate lines), or the reverse mentioned above, etc. This is similar to the technique with terzia rima, and works very well to pull the reader from one stanza to the next, maintaining that continual forward impetus (as in Dante's
Commedia).
This knits the poem together as a single fabric, but allows a good deal of loose play and irregularity from line to line. On the final three lines, for symmetry's sake, and for the final impact to be increased, it should be an "
abb-" with the final "a" (or "
dff-" or whatever the rhyming syllables would be) broken off, like the four lines above. That way, where one is expecting rhythm, it occurs... but is abruptly terminated, leaving, in Ellison's memorable phrase, "a forever intaglio" to haunt the reader.
So... I'd go back to the original, and simply try to recast it with a much lighter hand, rather than entirely changing it as you did here. As I said, perhaps it would be a good idea to give it some time, rather than to become frustrated with it; because it does have a lot of power, and some exceptional imagery and haunting ideas; it's just the technical aspects that need work, not the vision, here.
A canvas taunt white and blank
Waits for colors and fine paint
Only eyeless dolls sit and want,
Until they spill empty pigment
The void becomes ornament
Delicate dreams laminate
Color of a darker truth
Then all is
Released from the fierce hold
In my head.
