in reply to making like `lynx -dump`

Well, you can do this (assuming that you've slurped the entire page to $page):
$page =~ s{< \s* BR .* >|< \s* P .* >}{$/}egisx; $page =~ s{< .* >}{}egisx;
Then again, as Vroom said, if you have lynx on the system, it's much easier to just use the backquotes.