Russian Roulette

The chamber spins, round and round,
A clicking noise the only sound,
The sigh of relief,
A joyful song,
Sung by his sighs,
To a heavenly throng.

Round and round the chamber goes,
Something is off, something he knows,
Too late to speak,
He hears the click,
Once again praising,
His God for this gift.

The third spinning has commenced,
He knows his chances are slim,
To his unanimous amazement,
The click rings again,
Tears drip from his eyes,
As he begs for it to end.

“Fourth time’s the charm”, the captain replied,
So he spun the chamber again,
Hoping to feel the bullet inside,
A wail of anguish escapes from his lips,
Why must he suffer through all of these clicks,
And watch as the soldiers drained all of their pints?

Watching his prisoner,
The captain guffaws,
Watching this man struggle,
He called to his mates around the room,
Wanting his bets to pay off double.

A fifth time it spun,
And to his relief,
The gun indeed fired,
Fired a mighty blow,
Though not to him, but to his foe.

The captain lay dead,
Having been hit by ricochet,
The Russian soldiers stood silent,
Staring in dismay at the life that had been taken,
And the life that had been saved.

A backfiring gun,
Truly man’s best friend,
Had saved him for now,
So this torment would come to an end,
Finally come to an end.

Hey Homeless!

You've been such an ardent reviewer of mine, that I have come to review this delightful poem of yours! And so the cycle continues...
To get on with the review!

Theme: Two words+punctuation=Love it! I really enjoyed reading this poem. At first, I wasn't sure what was going on, but then at about this line

So he spun the chamber again,
Hoping to feel the bullet inside,

I finally realized that he was playing REAL Russian Roulette! Scary! With actual Russians, which in a way kind of almost made me laugh. Irony and all that. Anyway, it was definitely a different direction poetry wise than I have been reading lately and it made me glad I popped on over to read it! I felt like you were telling me a story and in the end, I like how it turned out.

Structure:
There were a one place where I thought the flow was off or odd. I'll just list it right here for your re-reviewing pleasure.

Why must he suffer through all of these clicks,
And watch as the soldiers drained all of their pints?

Here it just felt...wrong somehow in the last part about pints. It didn't really track well for me, but maybe that's just how my mind worked.
And in some places it seemed to rhyme and maybe I was just looking for that. Yeah, that's probably it. For some reason my brain loves rhymes. But in all, I think the structure worked well for you. The stanzas had that same amount of lines (good otherwise my OCD self would have been like OMG!!)

Sum:
Great poem! And if this review hasn't helped you at all, I'm terribly sorry, but what's done is done and I had fun doing it!

--Bailey

You have a great story here, but (and it's a big but) it's hidden and almost ruined beneath the inconsistent rhyme and the bland imagery. The punctuation also doesn't help matters.

Starting with punctuation as that's easiest to tackle, you do not need a piece of punctuation at the end of every line. Poetry follows the same grammatical rules as all other forms of writing. Not following these rules without a good and obvious reason makes for not good poetry. Punctuation is an essential part of the structure of your poem; if your structure is off, the rest of the poem is thrown off as well.

By the same token, your inconsistent rhyme scheme also messes with the structure of the poem. Rhymes rely upon patterns to work, and if you have no pattern to your rhyme, the rhyme fails. In addition, by having an inconsistent rhyme scheme, your reader is constantly thrown off as they expect a rhyme where there is none, or find a rhyme where one is unexpected. This disrupts the flow of your poem.

I suggest that you decide whether or not you want your poem to rhyme. If you wish for it to rhyme, pick an overall pattern and stick to it. In addition, punctuate your poetry as you would regular prose.

Concerning imagery, the one word I would use to describe this poem is vague. There is almost no sense of setting or situation when the poem begins, and it's only until about midway that the subject of the poem is made apparent. That is too late. In addition, the presence of the captain and his team is not revealed until near the end. Again, too late.

While you may have been trying to create tension, the vagueness of the situation completely counteracted that sense of tension, and had I just been reading to read, I would have stopped reading after the second stanza. Your opening stanzas are essential in capturing and holding your readers' attentions. Make those opening stanzas more vivid and gripping; try your best to elicit a visceral reaction. With a subject such as this, you could do so much more than the bland thing you have here. And I wish you would. The story this poem tells is quite interesting.