Normally you will see 'LONGPOLL requested work restart..' every couple of seconds with p2pool. If you're not seeing that, it might be this long polling issue. I'd try with just one pool configured.
Second thing I'd look at is if the host running your p2pool daemon is not too overloaded.
eja,
I see them and, no, the host with p2pool is a 3GhZ PentiumD/HT pc with xubuntu running just p2pool and bitcoind.
regards.
spiccioli.