Oppressing Them: A How-To Guide (old poem, revised)

Dog them early while the scent of their sulfur builds.
Maze the rules you make them play by until loopholes become jaws.
Stack them where they belong till God approves of the height of the pile.
Open their prison doors and pour on lingering fame.
Approve their paroles with a voice of long chains.
Denounce them at the whiff of impure thought.
Relegate their romances to the dustbin of hysteria.
Imagine their lifestyles as moldy bread.
Bite mincing mouthfuls from them till they spit back.
Reject their strapping response to infractions.
Blow them rat kisses.
Darken their doorsteps.
Assume their compulsion if you have it not.
Burn their books.
Own them.
Starve them.
Remove them from their lands.
Speak of universal love only when they aren’t there to hear.
Steal their women for a cabaret of night monkey wars.
Splay their men’s genitals upon a flea market blanket.
Drown their children in salt.
Rend their garments.
Bruise their heels.
Bivouac where they pray.
Infiltrate them when they make their own worlds.
Imitate them.
Revise their demigods.
Give them names to conceal the names with which they were born.
Carry a sponge to sop their servant blood from your white loins.
Blacken their teeth until yours are moonlike in comparison.
Honor them with caricatures while you shred their portraits.
Play their music in your nurseries.
Wear their feathered robes while you drop their bastardized secrets on the tiles of your temple.
Cut off their water.
Tell them the righteous can live on dew alone.
Suck their grass dry and watch the edges get crisp in the bright daylight you have made from their smiles.
Let your mercy rain down upon them as a mighty river.