Ink Tea Stone Leaf

Counting by the squares of squares,
an escalation:

One idea, the exception;

Sixteen  strokes of a pen
to sign essential orders for security;

Eighty one minutes of sleep
divided by exhausted nightmares;

Two hundred and fifty six accounts taken
of extenuating circumstances;

Six hundred and twenty five descriptions pulled
from all existing manuscripts in storage;

A thousand hopes extinguished,
two hundred and ninety six deferrals;

Two thousand, four hundred, and one escapes
from the law of arms committed;

Two thousand and forty eight reprisals twice
exacted on the next of kin;

Six thousand, four hundred, and eighty one extracted plaudits
from the citizens' press;

A thousand years of empire
promised to ecstatic crowds,
A thousand records
are summarily expunged,
And then a thousand so-called extremists
are loosed,
A thousand (pragmatists)
exult in the feast,
A thousand streams of trusting bodies
brought expressly for consumption,
Another thousand victims found 
extending alms,
A thousand honest advocates
expelled for telling filthy lies,
A thousand existential threats
are broken on the wheel,
A thousand slaves are left to die exposed
upon completion of the excavation of
A thousand holes for snakes
from the un-protesting hills.