Nicola Hardman – Power, Performance and the Cost of Staying Quiet
Nicola Hardman’s These Pandas Want You to Die arrives like a pressure valve finally giving way. Furious, funny, confrontational and painfully recognisable, the poem channels the exhaustion of existing within systems that continually demand more whilst offering less in return.
Written originally as a journal entry, the piece grows out of Hardman’s frustrations around the misuse of power — particularly within the creative industries, where conversations around fairness, opportunity and exploitation often circle endlessly without meaningful change. What gives the poem its force, though, is the way it widens beyond one industry or experience. This is not simply a poem about performance spaces or artistic labour. It’s about modern survival itself.
Hardman captures the relentless contradictions many people live under every day: work harder but rest more, stay healthy but stay available, be honest but don’t make anyone uncomfortable, speak out but don’t threaten the structures already in place. The language comes in waves: sharp, breathless and deliberately chaotic — mirroring the mental overload of trying to function inside systems that reward burnout whilst disguising it as ambition or resilience.
There’s also a refusal here to tidy anger into something more palatable. The poem swerves between humour, sarcasm and outright rage, rejecting the expectation that protest must remain polite in order to be heard. Some lines feel almost improvised, like thoughts arriving faster than they can be censored, and that immediacy becomes part of the poem’s power.
Yet beneath the fury is something deeply human: the desire to live honestly, safely and with dignity. Hardman’s poem asks difficult questions about who gets protected, who gets platformed and who is expected to quietly absorb the damage.
In a culture increasingly comfortable with performative accountability but often reluctant to confront deeper structural failures, These Pandas Want You to Die rightly refuses to look away…
These Panda’s Want You To Die
These Pandas want you to die.
Want you to try and try whilst pushing that little bit harder still.
Know your path, do the math, run to the bleep.
Sleep less. Adhere to the cabinet, sweet.
Sleep more, be sure you’re getting your nutrients and exercise
Be wise, don’t run out of money
HONEY, YOU’RE KILLING ME with your lies!
Not Eyes in the back of my head
Not Mechanical lungs and heart
Not optimally functioning and fed
Not working 7 days straight and then starting Over the next will ensure my safety or allow me Tokens for bed and fucking bread
My god, you tell US to be honest.
Tell us if we are, you promise to be kind and fair.
Haha it’s fucking hilarious that you’d even share the joke with me
You see me
Your enemy
Your little angry protestor
Can’t rest-er, calling you out on your shit-er
Fucker with a sometimes pretty face
Happy go lucker-you like a to fuck-a
Excuse me for wanting to be free
Excuse me for wanting to be
Someone my babes can learn from
Someone you can’t earn more and more from
By simply existing and trying my best to be happy and help others find their spark.
How about you START employing people who aren’t convicted abusers? Users of others, I thought we were trying to destroy cancers?
It’d be boss if you stopped giving rapists a microphone
Enjoying seeing us separated and alone are we?
Is that a little kink of yours?
Did you learn that from looking in daddy’s drawers?
Dude, how about you separate your blood from your dick
Stick your privileged ass on the fast lane, quick
And start paying attention to what you’re doing to the world?
