As Robotexts and Robocalls encroached on the privacy of my small digital enclave, I felt sad and helpless. A space I thought was mine was deemed a virtual garbage by modern predators. I decided to do something about this invasion of sorts, and started invading back. Something about this felt therapeutic and I built a habit out of replying to unwelcome texts.

What started as poetic text replies to scammers slowly extended to other forms of literature. Slowly, every text genre became a candidate for poetic invasion: I remixed conspiracy-filled social posts, reimagined meditation exercises, made collages out of porn phishing emails, perverted astrological chart readings, jumbled American jokes and so much more. "Invasions" became an eponymous book, collection of art prints and a poetry show.

My poetry became a shape-shifting chameleonic conqueror feeding on words that weren't mine. My poems became swarm-like, parasitic, emerging from a collective literary rumbling I was increasingly failing to grasp, until I decided to occupy it.

I picked the word “Invasions” in January 2022. In February that year, the word gained new charge as Russia invaded Ukraine. As a Lebanese citizen who lived through the Syrian and Israeli invasions of Lebanon, I’m keenly aware of the Ukrainian people’s struggle and the weight of the word I’ve chosen. This collection of parasitic poems, like so much of my work, is an irreverent perversion of what we’ve come to accept as our set reality and an uncompromising rebellion against that which attempts to subdue us into it.