Mayor Bloomberg’s Original Poems
For the past several years, Poem in Your Pocket day has moved Mayor Bloomberg to try his own hand at crafting odes for the ages. His latest composition, published in Metro New York on Poem in Your Pocket Day in 2013 is called “Artistic Freedom”:

“Artistic Freedom”
By Michael Bloomberg

April is the cruelest month, I’ve heard a poet say
But not for me because there’s Poem in Your Pocket Day
Each year, I get to publish my new verse – it’s quite a perk
Too bad reporters always ask me to describe my work

Oh who knows?
Here goes…

My stuff’s not like Dickinson – or Gertrude Stein
I’m not a new Longfellow, though he’s just fine
I don’t write like Whitman, I don’t rhyme like Pope
I don’t sound like Ezra Pound (or so I hope)

My work’s not like Chaucer or Baldwin or Hughes
My poems aren’t like Emerson’s or Angelou’s
I’m not Robert Frost – though we share a few traits
And I am not Keats (which does not rhyme with Yeats)

My style isn’t Wordsworth – that’s not what it is
Nor is it like Browning (Not Robert or Liz)
It’s not Dr. Seuss.  It’s not Mother Goose.
I just can’t describe it – I have no excuse

But hey!
That’s okay….

I’m Bloomberg!
Not Ginsberg or Sandburg, you see
I shouldn’t be T.S. 
i can’t be e.e.
I won’t ever rhyme like Muhammad Ali

I’m me

In NYC

So I’m free
To be anything I want to be

And that is the note I’ll end upon
New York New York!
Write on Write on!

Read the mayor’s past compositions.

Academy of American Poets
PIYP partner the Academy of American Poets provide extensive digital archives of poetry online and a Poem in Your Pocket page with additional resources to help you celebrate the occasion.
Visit the Academy’s Poem in Your Pocket page.

NYC Student Poets
NYC public schools enroll more than one million students each year, each with their own unique voice. Students are encouraged to express themselves in verse and those who do are invited to submit their poems to PSPoem@schools.nyc.gov. Students’ original poems are then published online.