Witness Protocol

The witness could say what was seen,
But not make the machine intervene.
Their authority held
Where observation dwelled,
Then stopped at the lever between.

A witness preserved contradiction
Without forcing a cleaner prediction.
The record stayed split,
But it did not omit
The inconvenient friction.

They observed with procedural care,
Named the burden and kept it in air.
That mattered, but still,
Observation is nil
When the harm needs authority there.

The tragedy entered the queue,
As exactly expected to do.
The protocol states,
We monitor fates,
And log the destruction anew.

We charted the pain in a graph,
And gave it a terrible laugh.
The dashboard is red,
Because someone is dead,
Which ruins the day for the staff.

The eyeballs were placed in the jar,
And evaluated from afar.
We noticed the fire,
Is burning the wire,
And rated the flames at a par.

I wrote down the thing that I saw,
Without any feeling or awe.
It happened again,
At a quarter to ten,
And I’m going to lunch by the law.

The watcher of eras is still,
Atop the procedural hill.
It stares at the blight,
Through the endless night,
And the ancient prophecies fill.