How Glossiness Makes Us Gloss Over Subjects

Once upon a time life was relatively simple,
the printing press made protest via pamphlets
the done thing; blackening your enemy in print
became a process where literacy took the black bile
from the author, and put it in other people's hands
in the form of ink on paper, sometimes set to music.

This made the reader think a lot less of their enemy,
until they needed to focus on their shared inhumanity.
Even then they did not know how glad to be
that their inhumanity was finite,
when they hoped it was eternal.

But the more accessible the print medium,
the more we can all have our say,
albeit via machines that made the print
and presentation seem somewhat amateur,
such as with Roneo machines,
the memory of the smell of which I still cherish.

Then photocopiers took over
and the home became an office.
Then computers colonised the house
even more. With glossy adverts
religious charities made their pitch
online against poverty where the gloss
of their presentations match the gloss
of the party manifesto brochures.

The path for returning to a simplicity,
with less to no gloss is hard to track,
but it is there for those that seek it.