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;
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Then again, as Vroom said, if you have lynx on the system, it's much easier to just use the backquotes.