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Spate of translating on the go at the moment. Here's a version of Das aesthetische Wiesel by German poet Christian Morgenstern. 
The Aesthetic Weasel
A weasel
sat upon an easel
in a wilderness of teasel.
Do you know
why?
The moon cow
spilled all
on the sly:
The beast sublime
was doing it
to fit
the rhyme.
Dear Apple,
This is a particle fiction inspired by a random web search which brought me to your page (below). It's part of a year-long literary project which was probably going to bring me to an Apple page sooner or later, given the size of your company. I hope you'll be pleased to learn that even a search from a Narnia novel brings visitors to your page, and that you'll be happy for me to use the image and slogan that inspired this story. Do please let me know either way.
jules [at] texthouse [dot] net
Made You Want
Leopard just works. All day, he's on the phone, moving things on, clinching deals, making sure the shipments of logistics have arrived at their proper destinations in good time. 
It's a full-time job. That's how it was advertised in the Middle Management Gazette. 'Full-Time Appointment', it said, quite clearly. Why so many people failed to grasp that is unclear. Some of them expected holidays, weekends and even nights to be free.
You soon put them right on that.
'Here's what you signed,' you said, waving the contract under their bloodshot eyes. Usually, they read their names through a blur of tears. And then they turned back to the phone, and wearily heaved the receiver to their ears. By and large, they disappeared soon after.
Leopard was different. You knew that, the moment he arrived. He had an air of challenge about him. 'Full-time means full-time,' he nodded, and rubbed his hands together, smiling straight at you. 'That goes without saying'.
You looked away. There was something strange about him. Something about the too-pressed cut of his jacket.
You couldn't know that he'd still be here, all and every night, weekends and holidays, some five years later, still wearing that same too-pressed jacket. He made you want to cry, but you still can't work out why.
© 2007 Jules Horne
21/12/2007
CS Lewis
The Horse and his Boy, 1954
p 117
The youngest daughter confronted the troll. It was a great slobbering thing, giving off a powerful stench of curdled milk and sour fish in brine. 
'Go back to where you came from,' she said. 'You won't fit in here. The people will never accept you.
The troll shifted in an agitated manner, its ears reddening.
'I've nowhere else to go'.
'You've the whole world,' the youngest daughter insisted.
'That's what I thought,' said the troll. 'But I've tried everywhere. It's always the same reaction. People just don't like what they see.'
'Maybe if you smartened up?' said the youngest daughter. 'Bit of a haircut, maybe a bath?'
'Tried that,' said the troll. 'If you lived in my kind of hole, you wouldn't be able to keep it up for long, either.'
He looked at the daughter, blinking his great leathery eyelids.
'Are people really that superficial?'
The daughter nodded.
The troll turned away and trudged on to a far new hole, on the hiddenest side of the wood, where he began to write his memoirs.
© 2007 Jules Horne
20/12/2007
Miles Krasse
O'Neill's Music of Ireland, 1976
p 99
Henry Taunt was a photographer. He sometimes wondered how he'd have turned out if he'd had another name, like Henry Joy or Henry Encourage, but thanks to his father, that wasn't the case. 
People queued up to have their portrait taken. Henry's style was unusual. He'd offer them a seat, then, just as they were about to sit down, pull it away. They'd fall on the ground, in an ungainly and often painful fashion: CLICK!
He'd look at their clothes (which we know as Victorian) and point and laugh: 'What a ridiculous hat! How can you possibly wear a black tube on your head all day long? What is it for, apart from making you slightly taller?' And their faces would grow red, and purple, and puce, and their cheeks puff like bloater fish, and he'd grab his picture: CLICK!
And he'd make fun of their cover ups: 'You may look all right on the outside, with your lace and swishy fabrics, but inside, your corset is fraying apart.' And while their eyebrows were knitting together in a furious frown: CLICK!
His photos of gurning, flailing, blurred individuals were a great hit with fellow photographers when they held their annual outtake parties. Just not with his clients. He was a century before his time.
8/12/2007
Oxford University Press
University of Oxford Examination Decrees and Regulations, 1981
p 375
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Street,_Oxford
Keenness, and battlefield. There's a Latin word which covers both. Acies.
There's a word which means orange, and level crossing, in a forgotten Creole of south America. Another which means friendship and cuttlefish in a lost Finno-Ugric tongue.
We take different realities and in some world or other, some culture already past or still to be, they are the same. Language converges them, cogs them together, and they vibrate in tandem, somewhere between themselves and each other.
That is how metaphors work: by creating a bridge between two words and dropping our brains in the middle, where they fight. Our imaginations flourish in that bottomless space. Our pictures live.
Like and unlike always share something, even if it's only the thought you've just bound them with.
15/11/2007
Jean Aitchison
Teach Yourself Linguistics, 1978
p 55
http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/frivs/latin/latin-dict-full.html
for the human mind. It can't help it. It does what it does, especially late at night. 
You can wheel out dreams and dissect them, or look at thoughts as they whirr around like gnats, seeing them form and fade, emerge and die. You can dredge up memories and pick them apart, in all their unreliable glory, their pointed stories shoring up your every habit and decision.
It will do no good. Your mind is always in flux. You can feed it daily, and it'll absorb all you throw at it. Out in the landscape, you can head it towards the fringed silhouettes of trees, or the damp grass underfoot, or the coolness of air on your cheek, the near and far, the hand and head, the every possible nuance of your perception. You'll never monitor all of them.
You'll see what you choose to see, and be imprisoned by it. So is it too much to ask you to choose carefully? Choose widely, wildly, wisely and never trust a fragment.
© 2007 Jules Horne
6/12/2007
Michel Faber (ed)
Shorts 4, 2001
p 69
'Rein gar nichts' means 'nothing at all', or 'sweet FA', depending on which dictionary you use. And Fanny Adams just has to be a girl with a story. Fanny Hill has been on TV lately - maybe a bit of her has crept in too?
Rein Gar Nichts
Sweet Fanny Adams, in her mob cap and corset, straddling the bedhead like an adventurous horse.
All of her judders as she bounces up and down: her glorious creamy breasts welling sumptuously from her bodice, her dimpling thighs and their fleshy expanses, her tautened arms clung fiercely to the post. And above it all, her jumping curls, sprung from her cap, spilling sweatily across her brow, up and down, left and right, to and fro.
Let me stroke them to the side, sweet Fanny Adams! Let me mess them royally with both buried hands. Let me coil them round my fingers and pull you in towards me.
Sweet Fanny! Sweet woman! Sweet nothing and all!
© 2007 Jules Horne
3/12/2007
Max Frisch
Biedermann und die Brandstifter, 1963
p 49
The night I wrote this, I'd just been at a lecture on Shackleton in Antarctica. I think that's where the boat came from.
Wenn Ich Übertreibe
When I exaggerate, I really push the boat out. It's a colossal boat, too - absolutely huge. Takes ten of us to push us out. On a good day. On a bad day, it takes thousands. 
It's an ocean liner. Crew of 2,000 and berths for a small town population of 16,000. Or, depending on how you count, a city of 250,000. That means it's pretty crowded. You can't move for people and their gins and tonics, all rowed on the decks for what seems like miles, and probably is.
They're crammed into their berths, six to a bed, and have to sleep in shifts, playing poker or sunbathing on pre-booked chairs the rest of the time. Whole families have been born here, died and been buried at sea. Whole generations. It's a dynastic business, this boat. Most of them have never met anyone from outside, on the land. They sail from country to country and terrorise the landlubbers whenever they draw near.
And I've only told you the half of it.
© 2007 Jules Horne
4/12/2007
Ingo Schulze
Simple Storys, 1998
p 93
Particle fictions are short stories written in five minutes, based on random-? stimuli taken from books and Google searches. I've been writing one a day since my birthday on 16th October, and will continue for a year. The aim is to write 365 stories and see what I can learn about patterns, creativity and resistance. 
The collection will coincidentally capture a time in the early 21st century when we are being powerfully shaped by search engines. It will also reflect an early 21st century bookshelf, and a human mind with all its faults, ruts and impulses, paddling through the English language towards a story.
Instructions as follows:
Certain tweaks are allowed:
You may finish your sentence. You may tidy your spelling and correct grammar. If you aren't at home, you can go to a library and write your story there, using the same rules.
Other tweaks are not allowed:
Choose another book. Choose another phrase. Choose another web page.
You must always go with what turns up. Even - especially - if you spot another, more interesting phrase on the page behind another finger.
Certain tweaks have emerged in response to unusual situations:
If the web page doesn't display, use the 'page cannot be displayed' page (5/12/2007).
If your book page is blank, use another page.
Other things are becoming apparent:
You will always smile at the book you find. The web page, on the other hand, will always make you groan. This is important. I am gradually finding out why.
You will rediscover forgotten books.
You will discover books you have bought but never read.
You will discover books that others have bought, and you have never read.
You will discover books you have borrowed and forgotten to return.
You will leave rediscovered books lying prominently around the house.
Your bookshelf will become even more disordered.
Evening stories will write themselves differently from morning stories.
After more than forty particle fictions, I'm starting to see some themes. Contrariness is one of them.
The Opposite
So he went out of the door and turned left, heading for god knows where. He'd never been there before. 
Round the corner, the street ran out. The quiet suburb he'd been living in all those years simply ended. There were no trees, no buildings but the backs of those he'd just left behind. Ahead was a concrete arena that stretched as far as he could see.
He started walking.
There was nothing to interrupt the horizon. The sun was lowering towards the edge of the world, reddening as it went. He looked back at the shrinking street, the backs of the houses he knew. His shadow stretched long across the slabs, his head folded at the neck onto the nearest building.
He walked still further and turned.
His head had left the building. His legs were giant's legs, unencumbered and strong.
He strode out towards the falling sun. There was a dot ahead, moving away.
He turned left again, and followed.
© 2007 Jules Horne
25/11/2007
Plato
The Republic, 1953
p 193
http://www.tv.com/seinfeld/the-opposite/episode/2326/summary.html
