Character assassination

We are searching like thieves for character.
Where are your marks on the wall?
We meet soft-spoken, shifting side-to-side.
We don't want to talk about our week's work.

I think you are working on the structure of petals.
They have taken your fingerprints for their file,
We are out stalking rebellion,
Making tracks for an excuse, another place.

I want to scrawl my name as a symbol -
Become famous as someone else,
Anonymous, mysterious, more glamorous
Than the girl who paid the electric bill today.

Turn your collar up against the onslaught.
Collect other people’s fingerprints and
Turn them into flowers. Pull the bricks into play -
If we reorganise these walls they look like life.

Edward Munch's Scream is scrawled
Everywhere here in stripped down letters.
Escape surveillance - this symbol is between me
and my fantasy. You can't print this -

Fragments – duplicated – shattered – multiplied
Six faces for today and anew for tomorrow
You can save the image on screen
But tomorrow it will be gone, the link void.

Where is the writing on the wall?
Unsigned/signed by a boy who doesn't exist
Who's in love with a girl he's never met.
What do your prints look like?

We sit silent beneath the strip lights,
Staring at the walls -
Clutching stewed tea in polystyrene cups
Between red cold fingers.

Make your mark - on something
other than the Council tax register.
Climb high, sign your name, on unwritten space
Place your flag and claim sovereignty here.