lacking imagination they had the flesh burned from them and their bones ground , tight-packed , fused and dispatched as sardonic messages in the sky over wedding parties and centennial celebrations , subliminal advertisements for the pit , the meanings of which lured others , in their eager redness , greed and faithlessness , to the appetite of the pyre ... scherzo , meanwhile , glowed like a neon sign , flashed on and off , his bone filament poorly connected , in danger of shorting altogether if not quickly insulated .