My tree is tall and hollow. I hide in a grotto of roots in the trunk, half buried in dirt and rotting wood fiber.
When I want to remember my past life in the outside world, I look up at a thin bar of light coming through a small hole above me.
A bird's nest is stuck between a crevice of bark near the bar of light. The faint rustle of feathers is the sign of the bird passing through the hole while returning to or leaving the nest.

My head is covered with an accretion of bird droppings which has slowly become a helmet growing an iota thicker each time the bird drops on me. The helmet has begun to extend down the sides of my head; sealing over my ears, drowning out the barking pursuit of Bloodhound-Stigmata encroaching in the distance.

I am resigned to dining on grubs and termites. This humble repast grossly offends my rarefied palate pining desperately for a Crepe Suzette or Linzertorte.

Fate is the absence of luxury but the impunity of Mephistopheles The Doppelganger.
The fake twin contains all crimes.

Blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the insignificant other; the fall guy and eternal alibi stooped in servitude, acting as a human shield, buffering nosy inroads of the Bloodhound-Stigmata.

My grin bears twins in infinity. My twins mutate unculled triplets and wood lice get stuck between my teeth, humbling my culinary pretense. Triplets and twins repent! Triplets and twins pay tree rent!

Cog in the fire machine! resurrect! vivisect! resurrect! vivisect!

I keep track of time by measuring the minute gradations in my helmet's thickness with a notched root torn from the grotto with my teeth. Gnawing on the root in the darkness I have covered it end to end with rows of notches-the root turning into a functional Braille ruler which I read with my fingertips in the darkness. I hold the root against the edges of my helmet near my cheeks, neck, and forehead, measuring the distances between my skin and the top strata of my helmet.

Doppelganger? I am willfully lost beyond a mirage of unculled triplets under microscopes-the wild surgeon's scalpel is our cross to bear-wild surgeon's scalpel hoe! twin! hoe!  cull! triplet! cull! Agriculture is the albatross of my insignificant other humbly gripping a laborer's hoe in callused hands, tending a little vegetable garden right outside my tree.
I mourn my fallen empire while looters grow rich off my pioneering spirit. My insignificant other furrows in the soil, poking runty carrots, oblivious to my whereabouts-hoe! twin! hoe!

I'm planning on issuing a battalion of rabid angels to blackmail the insignificant other into growing fields of poisonous mushrooms for our nemesis the Goody Goody Two Shoes.

The Goody Goody Two Shoes is the unculled mutant insubordinate chip off my insignificant other; an unwanted accidental triplet threatening our freedom at large.

I take into consideration that every time the bird drops on me, falling down the length of the hollow tree, the droppings do not always land on my head. For each one of the bird's misfirings, I make a note of the demerit, by subtracting a notch from the root, running it gingerly between my molars until feeling a tiny loose wood bump on my tongue. In my dogged quest for precision, I have calculated that two inches of bird droppings accumulate on my head per year.

According to the laws governing the symbiosis of victim and victimizer, royalties are my entitlement, but they haven't been forthcoming. Sacrifice has its place, Resurrect. Vivisect.

The Goody Goody Two Shoes is too dumb to know that my insignificant other's hoe is the incognito instrument of an invisible surgeon, who through subterfuge, enables my experimental living tissue to fall between the interstice of the law.  Guinea pig hailstones in vacuum packed tin cans fall from the sky, my insignificant other hits the cans with the hoe, playing solitaire stickball.

New notches of measurement are carved in the root with finger and toe nails. Big toe nails for deep notches, pinky nails for shallow notches, index fingernails for moderate notches. Spare demerit notch bumps are pouched in my navel marsupial style, blurring my fingerprints---hexing the Bloodhound-Stigmata.

Sometimes Mass Murderer's Anonymous comes knocking tree to tree, soliciting donations, holding out makeshift begger's cups made from emptied guinea pig hailstone cans they've stolen out of the sky, before the poor cans could have a chance of hitting the ground, the Goody Goody Two Shoes, or my insignificant other. If I could collect all the donations of Mass Murderer's Anonymous, they might add up to a fraction of my royalties due.

You want me to confess? My lust is thwarted. The Goody Goody Two Shoes opposes sex before marriage, preventing my prostitute from visiting me in my tree. The Goody Goody Two Shoes has hung a swing on the largest branch of my tree. My grotto sways slightly, tiny networks of fissures deep in the strata of my helmet shift seismic minutiae when the Goody Goody Two  Shoes swings back and forth knitting my chastity diapers with righteous indignation. The chastity diapers prevent me from breeding. When my prostitute gets wind of the reflections of the chastity diaper sparkling forth rays of my involuntary celibacy, she runs through the forest in the opposite direction from my tree.

I must breed for I am the Phoenix of my people. Resurrect! Vivisect! Long live the Guppy/Barracuda who cancel each other out, eluding the fisherman's nets!

The Goody Goody Two Shoes is trying to be clever, by embroidering on my chastity diapers the phrase "AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE OF DEPOSED FUGITIVE KINGS"  Dangling off the safety pin of the diaper is a little glow-in-the-dark cartoon of me in full helmet regalia, standing on my head on the top branch of my tree, waving SOS flags at Bloodhound-Stigmata search planes, flying overhead combing the forest for me.

The silly pranks of the Goody Goody Two Shoes do not scare me. It was my fate to profit off the misfortune of others, so I could build a ladder to the research cradle in the sky with bones from an entire species I almost made extinct. Die wahrheit ist ein geheimnis. There will be no misused and stolen guinea pig hailstones, Resurrect-Vivisect-Circumspect---for now, I bide my time, a mute for my cause, tolerating my predicament of bequeathing upon myself the albatross of the unculled triplet vulgarly advertising our mutating selves to the world.

I can't decide if the Goody Goody Two Shoes or my insignificant other will take the blame if I'm ever caught by the Bloodhound Stigmata. I travel to the future on a thin bar of moonlight, in five years my helmet will be as wide as the diameter of the tree trunk-the helmet growing into a mausoleum headdress which will get stuck between the inner walls of the tree. Fate is pain without repentance.

Once, I had big dreams of stuffing the bird and putting it inside the tiny cuckoo clock I carved at the tip of my notched root. With arrogance I thought I could usurp the bird by shaking the tree, causing the eggs to fall from the nest, smashing on top of my helmet; the vanquished babybirds adorning my headdress like the chevrons on the military uniform worn in my youth. I have grown to accept the mausoleum-headdress with grim abandon. Grandiose dreams of stuffing babybird beaks with spare demerit notch bumps, in simulation of stuffing apples in suckling pig mouths have been cast to the winds with pageantry and elegant clothes.

The mausoleum-headdress will still my absconding retirement plans, bringing my intense static secrecy to an end. Not a bad fate after running half my life.

We exhausted the flesh to break free of the bone-

A bone to abscond will thwart a Bloodhound-Stigmata
Baby chevrons hidden in Linzertortes will be bones of temptation for persuers-

Break free of the bone riddling Crepe Suzettes with fusillades of spare demerit notch bumps on misty nights-

To exhaust the flesh pulverize the bone of the Bloodhound-Stigmata-

Die Endlosung ist ein ewige aufgabe-

Wir sind uberhaupt nicht schuldig-

To catch a deposed king swaddle him in Crepe-Chevron-Suzettes-

When a machine goes up in flames donate your grotto to science-

Wissenschaft ist unbestechlich-

Chevron-Stigmata break free of Linzer-Bone exhaust- Linzer-bumps in Crepe roots bring notches of demerit to Torte-Suzettes-

Spare demerit notch bumps pouched in machine will make marsupials hide fingerprints in Stigmata belly buttons-

Deposed kings reenact pageantry in a grotto of roots- Grub machine-Grub-grub machine grub-grub war-grub war-root-root-war-root is the better part of precision-

Precision is roots of demerit bumps in guinea pig tin cans-

Die Menschenversuche mussen unbedingt genau sein-

Continent to continent-across oceans-ocean to tree-tree to land-land to bog-dull government scalpel knives rusting in a peat bog-

Bogged down in fading newspaper headlines of a king at large-King looming larger than the mirage beyond the microscope-

Tall tree tales do not a cryptic ghost make-demerit selves are protean fakes-

Protean ghosts carve a stigmata in the bark-Protean ghost kings are waiting for a thin bar of moonlight-

The Hermit continues his cryptic soliloquy, overcompensating for his poverty with lofty memories of haute cuisine and the martial grandeur of fallen political machines, referring to himself as a king in the third person.
The lofty thoughts are interspersed with fear of his persuers, shifting mutable identities, phantom whores denied, and qualms about the bird's control of his fate.
The jumbled thoughts and memories, distorted and fragmented from years of isolation, blend in a bitter cacophony of logorrhea;  relentless voice echoing up and down the thick walls of the tree, causing the nested bird to cock its head quizzically.