Punctured Foil

Lyrics

[Intro]
You sit in the dark of the chamber. 
A perfect little cup. 
The silver promise of morning.

[Verse 1]
Your foil lid is a tight, clean drum skin. 
Not a single wrinkle. 
John Sylvan dreamed you up in 1992. 
He and Peter Dragone, just trying to get a decent cup at the office. 
One at a time. 
They didn't know how many of you there would be. 

[Chorus]
One needle from the top. 
One needle from the bottom. 
The seal is broken. 
And the heat pours through you, a ninety-second flood. 
Everything you are is torn out, extracted. 
Just a punctured foil.

[Verse 2]
And now... 
you're just a warm, wet husk. 
Dripping on the stainless steel grate. 
The grounds inside are spent, chemically blank. 
A soggy, useless ruin. 
Your plastic shell, still holding the shape of what it was. 
But the purpose is all gone. 

[Chorus]
One needle from the top. 
One needle from the bottom. 
The seal is broken. 
And the heat pours through you, a ninety-second flood. 
Everything you are is torn out, extracted. 
Just a punctured foil.

[Bridge]
He said it himself, years later: 
"I feel bad sometimes." 
The man who used a sharpened ballpoint pen in the first prototype. 
Did he see the mountains of you then? 
Billions of little plastic ghosts. 
A landfill monument to five minutes of not having to scoop your own.

[Outro]
I lift the handle and drop you in the bin. 
You join the others. 
The smell of bitter coffee and hot, wet plastic. 
It's over.