the emergency broadcast system
is a vital channel w/ the ability
to interrupt anything & everything;
I've been hearing it all my life;
I actually pay attention to it
because I love white noise; the EBS
is like the voice of the goddess
from the void; unchanging u know
it could on forever; yes,
the Emergency Broadcast System
has no words but is undeniably a poem
w/ a female voice;
its message crawling across the screen;
or spoken familiarly by some unknown dude,
maybe the janitor left a note in the middle
of the night, 'test emergency broadcast system'
& he hits a button opening a mic; 'this is a test...';
repeating the message while he lights a cigarette;
I heard a girl do it once; I was thinking
at the time it might be his gf
or a female office worker working late who said
'as long as I'm here' & went ahead & flipped the switch,
grabbing the hot mic & adding quickly, 'This is a test...'
radio stations test the system too
with a variety of sounds some people
find annoying; writing in complaint
to the radio stations but I find
the sound soothing; but as I said
there's more than one: there is the one
that I call the cosmic trumpet;
a single unbroken mechanical tone
high low or in-between it never varies
& would otherwise be silence;
local announcers inform us 'this is a test
of the Emergency Broadcast System';
sometimes the voice is robotic,
which is eerie but not as disturbing as the
crackling fuzz that stabs the ears
like 1,000 pins; it's not even a machine
it's an open system communicating w/ itself;
if it had been an actual emergency
we are told we would be told to switch to
our local station, other words, to turn away:
'This has only been a test.'