Placeholder Witness

A witness who stands in the blank,
To keep the bureaucracy frank.
They hold up the line
Till a mascot more fine
Can properly fill up the rank.

It has no specific domain,
Just waiting around in the rain.
The narrative stalls
In the archival halls,
Until it is summoned again.

The Placeholder waits for a name,
With no one but silence to blame.
It fills up the hole
In the system’s sad soul,
While playing the waiting-room game.

The Witness is holding the spot,
For a manager’s horrible plot.
It just sits there and stares,
While the company tears,
And the project goes completely to rot.

There’s nothing behind its dead eyes,
Just a series of corporate lies.
It’s a functional gap,
In a terrible trap,
As the actual usefulness dies.

We put it right there on the shelf,
To distance the blame from oneself.
The Witness is fake,
A profound, sick mistake,
That is hoarding the organizational wealth.

The vacancy threatened the state,
An absence we had to abate.
A stub was procured,
And the blankness secured,
While the paperwork started to wait.

The entity sits in the queue,
With nothing specific to do.
It holds down the space,
With no permanent face,
Until an arrival is due.

The gap was officially filled,
Just as the committee had willed.
It stares at the wall,
Doing nothing at all,
While the budget is thoroughly billed.

The placeholder entered the frame,
Without an identity name.
It sits in the spot.
It is all that we got.
The registry looks just the same.

The temporary clerk is quite skilled,
The narrative quota is filled.
It’s surely the best,
At the lack of a test,
And the non-existent fields have been tilled.

We needed a face for the file.
We left it like this for a while.
It’s mostly a blur.
It does not occur.
Just put it on top of the pile.

The ancient and featureless ghost,
That stood at the edge of the post.
Before there was lore,
It had guarded the door,
An empty and face-lacking host.

The witness is fully inert,
Designed so it cannot assert.
It stays in its lane,
With no sign of a brain,
And the system remains unalert.