This problem was solved off of the POE mailing list by Andrew F.

It turns out that POE::Kernel tries to figure out which event loop to use, if none is specified. It was guessing correctly from the *.pl file, but incorrectly from the *.exe file (it tried to use the default POE::Loop::Select). I don't know what perlapp does to make POE::Kernel guess incorrectly, but to solve the problem you simply force POE::Kernel to use the correct event loop. Here is Andrew's solution (also note all the "use" statements so you don't have to put all those "--add" command line options on your perlapp line):

use warnings;
use strict;


use Tk;
use POE qw (Loop::TkActiveState);

use POE::Loop::TkActiveState;
use POE::Kernel;
use POE::Session;
use POE::Resource::Aliases;
use POE::Resource::Events;
use POE::Resource::Extrefs;
use POE::Resource::FileHandles;
use POE::Resource::Sessions;
use POE::Resource::SIDs;
use POE::Resource::Signals;
use POE::Resource::Statistics;

if(! defined($poe_main_window)) { die "\$poe_main_window not defined" 
+};
[download]

-Craig